Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Thursday 28 November
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Translation between cultures is a constant in today’s globalised world – whether it’s physical travel, international trade or interactions online. But how well do we really understand each other, and what can go wrong?
Linda Jaivin, a leading translator of Chinese, will talk about culture, difference, (mis)understanding and its unpredictable consequences, in the context of China and the West.
She’ll also offer behind-the-scenes insights into the work of translation – and ideas on how we can bridge the inevitable gap of understanding between different worldviews.
Jaivin will be in conversation with Toni Jordan.
Featuring
Toni Jordan
Toni Jordan is the author of six novels including the international best-seller Addition, Nine Days, which was awarded Best Fiction at the 2012 Indie Awards, and Our Tiny, Useless Hearts (2016), which was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and for the Voss Literary Award. Toni holds a bachelor of science and a PhD in creative arts. Her most recent novel is Dinner with the Schnabels (2022).
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Linda Jaivin
Linda Jaivin is the author of the international bestselling novel Eat Me – a kind of Sex and the Sydney before there was Sex and the City – as well as six other works of fiction, many of which have been published internationally, and four critically acclaimed works of non-fiction, including the China memoir Monkey and the Dragon, the Quarterly Essay Found in Translation: In Praise of a Plural World and Beijing, part of Reaktion Press's Cityscopes series and a love letter to the city to which she first travelled in 1980.
Her 2009 novel A Most Immoral Woman was based on the true story of the affair between the great Australian China correspondent George E Morrison and an American nymphomaniac heiress in China and Japan in 1904. Her latest novel, The Empress Lover, is another kind of love letter to Beijing mixed up with a mystery, a fantasy and a tragedy. The Infernal Optimist, a black comedy set in an immigration detention centre, was shortlisted for the 2007 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.