A woman's fight to hail Eileen Chang in the West

Karen S. Kingsbury introduces contemporary Chinese writer Eileen Chang to the Western world by publishing translations of Chang's essays and fiction. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Her work has inspired Oscar-winning director Ang Lee and she is considered one of the most important Chinese writers of the 20th century, but Eileen Chang has yet to make a major impact in the West.

Translator Karen S. Kingsbury says she is determined to change that and persuade Western readers to understand why Chang is worthy of their attention through a biography she is working on.

"I am not planning just to write an English version of the already existing biographies in Chinese. I will try to speak to an American audience to explain why Eileen Chang is so worth their attention," says Kingsbury.

When Kingsbury first read Chang's Love in a Fallen City in Chinese, her Chinese wasn't very good. "But it's like a magnet that pulls you into it, and you become a translator because of that text," recalls Kingsbury.

The American academic wrote her doctoral dissertation on Chang, completing it in 1995, the same year Chang died in Los Angeles of cardiovascular disease.

Since then, Kingsbury has published translations of Chang's Love in a Fallen City and Half a Lifelong Romance.

Kingsbury's translation of Love in a Fallen City was first published in Renditions, a literary journal run by Chinese University of Hong Kong, for a special issue in memory of Chang in 1996.

Together with translations of Chang's other short stories, it was later published by Penguin in 2007, and it has been selling steadily since then.