PRH leads action at bustling Beijing

Penguin Random House China revealed a host of new initiatives and acquisitions during the Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF), including the launch of a new literary imprint and a partnership with Chongqing University Press. Meanwhile, China’s largest trade publisher, China Publishing Group (CPG), signed co-operation agreements with both Cambridge University Press (CUP) and Oxford University Press (OUP).

PRH’s new imprint, as yet unnamed, aims to publish “the most prominent writers and the best contemporary literature” from all over the world in different languages. The list will launch in 2017 with a number of titles in Vintage’s Hogarth Shakespeare series, followed by Confession of the Lioness by Mozambican writer Mia Couto, winner of the Neudstadt International Prize for Literature in 2014. Mark Zhao, chief editor for adult publishing at PRH China, said: “There’s always demand for these books in China, although it’s not very big. There are very few strong, trustworthy imprints of this kind, with high-quality, beautiful design and a diverse selection— we want to be one, and get more and more readers interested in good literature.”

In early 2017 PRH China will also launch Penguin Young Adult Classics in Chinese, in partnership with CITIC Publishing Group, and invite young Chinese illustrators to contribute artwork to each Western classic in the series. Chinese Penguin Specials will also launch in 2017; the titles will be akin to UK Penguin Specials. The list will include local works from China, plus Chinese translations of UK Penguin Specials.

Visitors attend the Beijing International Book Fair 2016.

Meanwhile, PRH has partnered with Chongqing University Press to publish a special edition of the works of two authors in their 400th anniversary year, William Shakespeare and Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu, as a “testament” to British-Chinese relations in publishing. The edition, which pairs Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with the best known of Tang’s works, “Peony Pavilion”, is published this week. Xiaoyang Zhang, deputy editor-in-chief of Chongqing University Press, said it was an “honour to have the chance to publish with PRH... so that we can enhance our mutual understanding and exchanges”.

Notable acquisitions announced by PRH China at BIBF, meanwhile, included securing Chinese rights to publish Paul French’s “much anticipated” second book City of Devils, a rags- to-riches tale of two self-made men set against a backdrop of crime and vice in 1930s Shanghai; Sheng Keyi’s Savage Life, a loose prequel to the critically well-received Northern Girls, which traced the intergenerational vicissitudes of a family amid the turbulent history of 20th-century China; and Chi Zijian’s novella Goodnight, Rose, which is about the unlikely friendship forged between a Jewish woman and a Chinese girl in the snowy northern Chinese city of Harbin.

Regarding CPG’s co-operation agreements with OUP and CUP, CPG president Tan Yue said: “We see big potential for introducing more British books into the Chinese market. It’s a priority to introduce more books with a focus on politics, culture, education and technology.”

CPG intends to contribute to a Chinese research and publishing centre at Oxford. The centre will bring together existing Chinese books and resources that Oxford graduate sinologists will then translate into English for publication in the UK.

Cambridge University Press c.e.o. Peter Philips said the co-operation agreement his publisher struck with CPG was about “making high-quality Chinese scholarship available in the West in English, and about making the best of Cambridge’s titles available in Chinese editions in China. We have a flow both ways.”