Australian writers become write stuff in China

Australian authors were mobbed day after day by mostly young readers during Australian Writers Week in China.

Tom Keneally catches up with Oz Lit fans in China. Picture: Luke Pegrum

Australian authors Tom Ken­eally, John Marsden, Geraldine Brooks and book illustrator Bronwyn Bancroft were mobbed day after day by mostly young readers during the recent Australian Writers Week in China.

Australian Chinese poet and translator Ouyang Yu, who lives in Melbourne, said “perhaps in the not-too-distant future iron ore, wool and Oz lit will be the three major exports to China”.

Last year, according to a survey by the Think Australian newsletter produced by Australia’s publishing industry, China bought more Australian book rights, by deals, than any other country.

More than 3200 Australian books were translated into ­Chinese from 2003 to 2015.

John Hirst’s The Shortest History of Europe has sold more than 100,000 copies in China.

Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark has sold more than 40,000 copies — with film tie-ins boosting sales, as in Western countries, and with director Steven Spielberg enjoying huge popularity.

While Keneally is catching up fast, the two most translated Australian writers are Patrick White, Australia’s Nobel prize winner for literature, and Colleen McCullough, whose The Thorn Birds — with screen support — has sold 250,000 copies.

Yu said: “In every respect ­except academically, Colleen McCullough beats Patrick White in China” — although in such academic terms, White ­appears to be studied more in China than in Australia today.

Greg McCarthy, chairman of Australian Studies at Beijing University, said White remained on the syllabus in China but “is now read in a different manner, say on the sexuality question or on his ecological views”.

Tim Winton and Peter Carey are popular topics for MAs and PhDs, and “if there is a new trend, it is Alexis Wright and ­indigenous authors”.

Other growing areas of ­demand for Australian writing include children’s books, rom­ances, thrillers and biographies.

At the recent 10th annual writers week, Man Booker Prize winner Keneally, Pulitzer prize winner Brooks, young adult fiction king Marsden and indigenous children’s author and illustrator Bancroft spread out after Beijing to visit publishers, bookshops, universities and schools in Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi’an, Hohhot and Harbin.

Hu Wenzhong, the core leader of the “Gang of Nine” Chinese, mainly literature academics, who in 1979 were the first sent to study in Australia, said Henry Lawson, the short-story writer and poet, “was looked upon, at the height of leftist tendencies in China, as a spokesman of the working people”.

Li Jianjun, secretary-general of the Chinese Association for Australian Studies, said from the start of communist China until the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, “only Australian ‘progressive writers’ were translated, whose works ‘exposed’ the capitalist system”, such as Frank Hardy and Wilfred Burchett. During the Cultural Revolution all foreign literature was banned.

After that, a boom began which has not ended.