2024 - Zhang Yueran
Zhang Yueran (born Jinan, 1982) is one of the most influential and exciting Chinese writers of her time.
In 2024 Zhang Yueran is the main literary guest of the festival Made in China in Ghent, on which occasion she will be staying at Passa Porta as a writer in residence. She is considered to be part of the so-called ‘balinghou’, the generation of writers born in the 1980s, after the turbulent time of Maoism. Great industrialization shifted the emphasis from rural to urban, and this urban focus is evident throughout Yueran's work. Her novel Cocoon (World Editions, 2022, trans. Jeremy Tiang) provided her international breakthrough and was awarded the French Prix Transfuge for best Asian novel. Also her collection of short stories Ten Loves (Math Paper Press, 2013, trans. Jeremy Tiang) is translated in several languages. According to Ian McEwan, Zhang brilliantly combines psychological realism with magical elements in her books.
In 2019, she was a guest writer at the Confucius Institute in Leiden. She seems to have a special connection to the Netherlands since one of her stories is about a sunflower who falls in love with Van Gogh, and her early novel The Promise Bird (The Math Papers, 2012, trans. Jeremy Tiang) features several Dutch characters.