Su Tong - The Boat to Redemption

He’d been discharged from hospital to come and settle up with me. He was extremely nimble, with one foot on my gangplank and a portable noticeboard in his hands. He was looking for a spot to set it up.

I couldn’t read what was on the board at first, but then he gave up looking for the right spot and simply held it up for me. It wasn’t what I’d expected — shipping news — but something he’d had someone write for him, using the barbershop notice as a model. But what it said was a hundred times worse:

STARTING TODAY, KU DONGLIANG OF THE SUNNYSIDE FLEET

IS BANNED FROM COMING ASHORE.

Born in 1963 in Suzhou and now living in Beijing with his family, Su Tongis one of China’s most iconic bestselling authors, shooting to international fame in 1993 when Zhang Yimou’s film of his novella collection Raise the Red Lantern was nominated for an Oscar. His first short-story collection, Madwoman on the Bridge , was published by Black Swan in 2008. The Boat to Redemption is his latest novel to become an instant phenomenon in China.

Translator Howard Goldblattis Research Professor at the University of Notre Dame. He is the recipient of two translation fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and has been awarded the Translation of the Year Prize from the American Literary Translators Association and the Man Asian Literary Prize. In 2009 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for translation.

1 There are no such things.