In 2005, when Penguin opened their first China office, there were no other foreign trade publishers in the country. Books had never been branded, good literary translators were scarce, and the government maintained a tight control on the publishing industry. This was unfamiliar territory for a Western publisher, and those seeking to get a foothold would need a careful and unconventional approach.

Jo Lusby was Penguin’s appointed scout, employed initially for a scoping mission and later to run the Penguin China office. Lusby’s first move was to publish the Chinese bestseller, Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong in English, a book that went on to win the Man Asia Literary Prize and earn Penguin China a reputation both within China and internationally.

Since then, Lusby has made Penguin China an integral part of China’s publishing industry, building the relationships and making the investments necessary to make joint-publishing with China viable. While last week’s post looked at the globalisation of Chinese literature, this week’s looks at the globalisation of its publishing industry, in an interview with a pioneer.

English, by Wang Gang, Penguin Books

English-language publishers have been trying to crack the big Chinese book since Jung Chang’s Wild Swans made it big in the early 1990s, hoping to kick-start a fad in contemporary Chinese literature. It hasn’t been easy, though, and twenty years later Chinese writing is still a grey area in the Western literary consciousness.

There are various explanations suggested for this, related mostly to the difficulty of translating Chinese literature into English and the lack of working relationships between the Chinese and international publishing industries. There’s a gap here that needs to be filled, but even in this era of intense globalisation few have the language skills, commitment to literature and publishing industry connections required.

Enter Paper Republic, a group of China-based translators working with both international editors and academic networks to promote contemporary Chinese literature abroad. Translators par excellence, they are interpreting industry conventions as much as languages, introducing the Chinese literary scene to Western publishers in a way they can understand. Paper Republic was co-founded by Eric Abrahamsen, my conversation partner for this week’s post.