About the author:
Li Zishu was born in Malaysia in 1971. She started her career as a journalist in Malaysia before she dedicated her work life exclusively to literary writing. She has published more than ten literary works including novels, short story collections, microfiction, and essays. As an author of Chinese descent, Li Zishu's writings always touch Chinese life within the multi-ethnic structure of Malaysia, therefore she finds readers not only in Malaysia, but also across Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. Her literary talent is highly acknowledged through numerous prominent prizes. The English version of her novel The Age of Goodbyes has been published in 2022.
 
About the book: 
Book Title: 《流俗地》
English Title: Worldly Land
Author: 黎紫书Li Zishu
Original publication: Beijing October Arts and Literature Publishing House
ISBN: 978-7-5302-2128-0
Publication Date: April 2021
476 pages

Worldly Land describes the ordinary life in Ipoh, the “Tin City” through the perspectives of the protagonist Gu Yinxia, a blind girl of Chinese-descent, who was born in an under-class family. Being blind since birth, Yinxia is not quite susceptible to superficial prejudices but highly intelligent. She plays chess, has learned to write in braille, and works at a call agency for Taxis. She keeps the map of the whole city in her mind and distinguishes persons through their voices. In her hometown, she settles into the tensions of a widely ramified family, the joys and hardships of modern everyday life, confronts with emotions and mistakes - a normal life with unusual perception. The novel reads like an ethnography of the southern Chinese-influenced diaspora in West Malaysia: how they love and hate, live and die. They may leave and return, but none can escape the taint of customs and also of human conditions, including family and friendship obligations and ties, as well as the grand political frameworks of state-building. 
Enriched with detailed descriptions of those intertwined cultural traits of Buddhism, Daoism, Islam and Hinduism, this book deserves to be considered carefully by those sophistical and demanding readers.
It was listed as one of the top 10 novels of 2020 by the journal Asiaweek (Hong Kong).

The co-translators Christoph Palm and Wu Xiujie presented the book in our pitching session on 29 June 2023.

For further information please contact:

Wu Xiujie
Academic and Literary translator
On this website
E-Mail: [email protected]

Christoph Palm
Born in 1957, studied sinology and ethnology in Hamburg, Bonn and Berlin, spent several years studying in Jinan, Beijing and Hangzhou, received his doctorate in 1993 on the theme of “Yang Guifei in Chinese literature”. Since the early 1990s, he has gained knowledges empirically as a study tour guide about those countries in East and Southeast Asia.