Books offer a glimpse of China in 2014

Literature

The year 2014 will be a busy year for important Chinese literary masters.

Penguin China/Australia has Mo Yan, Mai Jia, Wang Anyi and Bi Feiyu on its publishing schedule. The English version of 2012 Nobel Literature Prize winner Mo Yan's latest novel Frog, about the country's family planning policy, will be published in the second half of the year. Bi's Massage and Wang's Scent of Heaven will also be published in English.

In February, detective writer Mai Jia will see his book Decoded published in English, the first of his books to be translated into that language.[Photo Provided to China Daily]

In February, detective writer Mai Jia will see his book Decoded published in English, the first of his books to be translated into that language. His work has already been translated into Spanish. The novel is suspenseful storytelling centered around math and decoding.

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Pantheon, publisher of Bertelsmann group, is to translate Brothers author Yu Hua's Boy in the Twilight: Stories of the Hidden China. The book is "a collection of 13 audacious and powerful stories that reveal the sorrows, joys, shifts and constants of everyday life inside this rapidly changing country".

Also from Bertelsmann, Random House is to present a new novel by Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, titled China Dolls. Set in the "Chop Suey Circuit" of San Francisco right before World War II, the novel tells the story of three showgirls, two from Chinese families.

English Writings of Hu Shih, published by Springer, brings together Hu's English essays, speeches and academic papers, as well as book reviews, all written between 1919 and 1962. A reformer of modern Chinese language, Hu served as the Republic of China's ambassador to the United States from 1938 to 1942 and later as chancellor of Peking University.