We're delighted to be welcoming author Xu Xiaobin and translator Nicky Harman to Leeds to discuss the writing and translation of Xu’s novel, Crystal Wedding, published in March 2016 by Balestier Press. The talk will be followed by an audience Q&A.

Crystal Wedding tells the story of Yang Tianyi, a “leftover woman" under pressure to find a husband. She is attractive and intelligent but knows little of the world, and finally makes a disastrous marriage. At the end of the 1980s, in Tiananmen Square, she meets her love Hua Zheng again. However, after the political turmoil, Hua Zheng is framed as one of the perpetrators of the disturbances, and is sentenced to prison.

Set against the background of China’s turbulent 1980s and 1990s, Crystal Wedding is a novel of searing emotional honesty.

Refreshments will be provided, and there will be a bookstall from Blackwells Books, on contemporary Chinese fiction.

Find out more about it on our website here!

Xu Xiaobin, born in 1953 into an intellectual family in Beijing, spent nine years in the countryside and at a factory during the Cultural Revolution. In 1978 she entered the Chinese University of Central Finance just after universities had reopened and entrance examinations were held nation wide. She is noted for her writings about gender and sexuality, that push the boundaries of what is politically acceptable in today's China.

(Bio from Paper Republic)

Nicky Harman is one of the leading Chinese-English translators in the UK.She is one of the organisers of the READ PAPER REPUBLIC project, posting and promoting a free-to-view short story every week for a year. She has contributed to the literary magazines Chutzpah, and Words Without Borders, and also organizes translation-focused events, mentors new translators and was one of the judges for the Harvill Secker Young Translators Prize 2012, and the Writing Chinese translation competition.

(Bio from Paper Republic)