China will publish a novel by the 2004 Nobel laureate in literature in simplified Chinese characters next week, announced Beijing October Art Publishing House Friday.
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, a 58-year-old Austrian novelist, is the first of her works to be introduced on the Chinese mainland. The novel was published in traditional Chinese characters in Taiwan in 2003, said Han Jingqun, an editor of the publishing house.
The Piano Teacher, published in 1983, is a semi-autobiographical novel about Erika Kohut, a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory whose father, like Jelinek's, died in a psychiatric institution.
Han said noted translators Ning Ying and Zheng Huahan completed the translation in 2000, but the translated work was not published on the Chinese mainland. The publishing house worried that Chinese readers might not accept the novel's open depiction of deviant sexual psychology.
"The translation is a tough journey because the original work contains lots of symbols and imagination. We have tried our best to be loyal to the original work while making the translated one acceptable to Chinese readers," said Ning Ying.
Although the novel has not been published on the Chinese mainland, some Chinese are familiar with the story from the movie adaptation by Austrian director Michael Haneke, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes film festival in 2001.
Born in the Austrian town of Murzzuschlag in 1946 to a father of Czech-Jewish origins and a Viennese mother, Jelinek made her literary debut with a collection of poems Lisas Schatten in 1967.She won wider acclaim among the German-reading audience with her 1975 novel Women as Lovers and her Wonderful, Wonderful Times in 1980.
(Xinhua News Agency December 18, 2004)
