Nicky
Harman peruses Goodreads for reviews of a classic Chinese novel.
As
a translator, I’ve always been fascinated by how readers react to their first
foray into translated Chinese fiction. The Leeds Centre for Contemporary
Writing runs an excellent section with readers’ reviews of contemporary novels;
but what about the classics? I have a personal favourite (I’m currently
half-way through my second reading), The
Story of the Stone, also known as A
Dream of Red Mansions, or The Red
Chamber Dream, an epic family saga written and set in eighteenth-century
Beijing. By way of an experiment, I decided to trawl through the Goodreads
review sections.
