Overseas publishing rights for Gold Mountain Blues (金山), a novel by Zhang Ling (张翎) who was born in Hangzhou and emigrated to Vancouver, have been purchased for English, French, Italian and Dutch editions, reports China Publishing Today (电子报第 6 版). Here is Penguin’s press release:
Penguin Group (Canada) has acquired Canadian publication rights to an epic Chinese–Canadian novel by Zhang Ling, published in China to rave reviews. Gold Mountain Blues is the story of the great Chinese migration to Canada (called Gold Mountain by the Chinese wooed with stories of a “promised land”).
In the tradition of Wild Swans and The Concubine’s Children, Gold Mountain Blues is the story of five generations of a Chinese family, from the 1860s to the present. The novel relates the struggles and sacrifices of the labourers who built the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the evolution of the modern Chinese–Canadian identity. It is a dramatic Canadian story, says commissioning editor Adrienne Kerr, “that brings us closer to our shared past.” Kerr acquired the novel from New York agent Barbara J. Zitwer for publication in Canada in 2011.
In China, the novel is nominated for the inaugural Overseas Chinese Literary Award, and is a strong contender for the 2010 Maodun Literary Award. (The Maodun Prize, awarded every five years, is China’s biggest literary prize, equivalent to the Man Booker Prize.)
Zhang Ling, who stared writing in the mid 1990s, has published four novels and three collections of short stories. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the October Literary Award in 2000 and 2007, the International Chinese Literary Award for Best Essay in 2003, the first Yuan Huesong Literary Award in Canada in 2005 and the People’s Literary Prize in 2006.
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