Executive Overview
Literary translation is often romanticized as a delicate, harmonious bridge built between cultures, but the behind-the-scenes reality is frequently one of logistical friction, administrative limbo, and long periods of obscurity. Such was nearly the fate of To the East of the East, an ambitious, geographically expansive, and temporally fluid novel by acclaimed Taiwanese author Ping Lu, translated into English by award-winning writer and translator Jeremy Tiang.
Originally commissioned nearly a decade ago by a Taiwanese literary agency, Tiang’s English translation completed its initial manuscript phase only to vanish into the bureaucratic ether. Despite initial developmental editing by acclaimed translator Anna Holmwood, the project stalled after its institutional backer, the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, found no immediate publisher. For nearly ten years, the translated manuscript lay dormant—a completed work of art stranded on the shores of the Anglophone publishing world, unseen by the global readership it deserved.
The book’s eventual resurrection is a testament to translator-led advocacy and the persistent power of independent publishing. Last year, during a routine check-in with the translation’s funding body, Tiang discovered the project’s orphaned status. Taking matters into his own hands, he rescued the manuscript from obscurity and pitched it to World Editions, a publishing house renowned for championing international literature. Recognizing the novel’s thematic resonance and stylistic brilliance, World Editions eagerly offered the book a permanent home, slated for release in 2026.
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This profound journey—from Ping Lu’s initial literary spark to Tiang’s labyrinthine translation process, and finally to its improbable revival—offers a rare, illuminating look at the mechanics of transnational literature. In an exclusive joint interview, Lu and Tiang discuss the germination of the novel, the linguistic and cultural acrobatics required to translate across centuries and dialects, and the striking metaphors that capture the multi-layered architecture of To the East of the East.
Detailed Chronology: From Conception to Resurgence
To understand the scope of To the East of the East, one must trace its dual timelines: the creative genesis within the author’s mind and the arduous, decade-long administrative journey of its English translation.
Phase One: The Germination of an Idea
For Ping Lu, one of Taiwan’s most celebrated contemporary writers, the novel began as a meditation on human misunderstanding. The central spark was not a plot point or a single character, but a pervasive condition of human existence: the myriad ways people misinterpret one another.
"The initial spark of inspiration behind To the East of the East was the thought of how many misrecognitions and misreadings exist in the world: between men and women, parents and children, husbands and wives, but also between the ocean and land, being adrift and scattering apart, imprisonment and escape, borders and freedom . . . A rich and varied imaginative landscape," Lu reflects.
This thematic framework naturally demanded an expansive canvas. The novel roams fluidly between distinct cultural hubs—Taipei, Macau, and Beijing—each utilizing its own unique variant and cadence of the Chinese language. Furthermore, the narrative cuts effortlessly across time, bridging the contemporary era with the historical depths of the 17th century.
Phase Two: The Initial Translation and the Long Silence
Approximately ten years ago, a Taiwanese literary agency approached Jeremy Tiang about translating the sprawling manuscript into English. Having collaborated with the agency previously and drawn to the book’s intriguing premise, Tiang accepted the commission. Over the course of the following year, he immersed himself in Lu’s complex world, rendering the multi-voiced narrative into English.
Upon completion, the manuscript underwent developmental editing by Anna Holmwood—herself a brilliant editor and a highly accomplished translator. The text was polished, refined, and ready for the market. Yet, despite these foundational steps, the project hit a systemic wall. Funded by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, the translation lacked a commercial publisher willing to take a chance on its unique structural and historical demands.
As months turned into years, Tiang lost track of the project. The manuscript drifted into the background of his busy career as a novelist, playwright, and prolific translator of more than thirty books from Chinese.
Phase Three: The Rescue and 2026 Publication
The turning point arrived serendipitously last year. While checking in with the National Museum of Taiwan Literature—the institutional funder of the translation—Tiang learned a sobering truth: no publisher had ever acquired the rights, and the project was considered entirely dormant.
Rather than letting the translation languish indefinitely in a digital drawer, Tiang took the initiative. Recognizing that the novel required a specialized home that understood the nuances of international literature, he submitted the manuscript directly to World Editions. Given Tiang’s prior professional relationship with the press and their specialized catalogue, it proved to be a natural alignment. World Editions immediately recognized the literary weight of the work and welcomed it to their forthcoming list, setting the stage for its long-delayed Anglophone debut.
Supporting Context & Metrics: Translating the Untranslatable
Translating To the East of the East presented a formidable array of technical challenges. A text that bridges centuries and spans maritime and continental Chinese landscapes requires an agile, highly sensitive translator who can navigate shifting registers without flattening the stylistic diversity of the original.
Navigating Dialects, Registers, and Eras
Tiang’s primary task involved managing the distinct linguistic identities embedded within the text. Characters operating in modern Taipei sound fundamentally different from those in Macau or Beijing, reflecting subtle socio-political and cultural divergences in contemporary Chinese. Superimposed upon this geographical spread is a 17th-century historical stratum, requiring Tiang to pivot between modern vernaculars and archaic literary tones.
The Riddle of the Heart: A Case Study in Translation Choices
One of the most delicate moments in the translation process centered on a seemingly casual literary device: a riddle exchanged between two characters.
In the original Chinese text, a female character flirts with a male suitor by posing a riddle. The linguistic mechanics rely heavily on the visual and structural formation of Chinese characters. She asks him to add a heart radical (心) to the characters for "burnt troops" (燋兵), which yields the character for "fragile" (燋 + 心 = 憔悴, or more specifically, playing on visual components of vulnerability).
For a translator working into English, this moment poses a classic dilemma: how to render a character-based visual pun legible to readers completely unfamiliar with the Chinese writing system.
Tiang’s editorial philosophy in this instance prioritized narrative momentum and character psychology over exhaustive linguistic exposition:
"There was some discussion about how to make this legible to readers who don’t know Chinese, but I decided that the better choice would be not to explain it, because we risked getting bogged down in an overly intricate discussion about how Chinese characters are formed," Tiang explains. "The purpose of the riddle in the narrative is for the character to not-so-subtly allude to her own fragility as a way of flirting with the man she’s asking the riddle to. The exact mechanics of the riddle are less important than the images it evokes—a movement from violent, fiery battle to something much more delicate."
By trusting the English reader to absorb the emotional shift rather than the orthographic math, Tiang preserved the scene’s intimacy and psychological realism.
The Dynamics of Author-Translator Independence
Interestingly, the translation of To the East of the East proceeded entirely without direct collaboration between the author and the translator.
Ping Lu notes that she was not involved in the translation process, leaving Tiang to work independently. Rather than viewing this distance as an obstacle, Tiang found that the text itself provided all the necessary guidance. The internal architecture of Lu’s fictional universe was so meticulously constructed that every tonal shift, spatial boundary, and temporal transition was already encoded on the page.
Official Statements & Metaphors of the Novel
To fully grasp the aesthetic ambitions of To the East of the East, Lu and Tiang offer contrasting yet complementary metaphors that illuminate the novel’s structural and thematic core.
The Author’s Perspective: Mirrors Within Mirrors
When describing the ambient atmosphere and structural design of her writing process, Ping Lu draws a direct parallel to contemporary classical music.
"When I’m writing, I often listen to Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror), because I love its central image—and that’s exactly what I hoped to convey in To the East of the East, one mirror after another arranged at different angles, reflecting each other. Mirrors within mirrors," Lu states.
This metaphor underscores the recursive, self-reflective nature of the novel, where characters, historical epochs, and geographical locations act as optical refractions of one another, casting infinite variations of human longing and misrecognition.
The Translator’s Perspective: The Painted Zebra
For Jeremy Tiang, the ideal entry point into the book’s thematic labyrinth is found on the very cover chosen by World Editions.
"The image on the World Editions cover is a pretty great metaphor for the entire novel," Tiang observes. "It appears to be a zebra, but on closer examination, turns out to be a white horse with stripes painted on. This deceptive creature is only briefly mentioned once in the book, but it has a potent symbolic connection to the wider themes of the narrative, in which no one is quite who they pretend to be, even to themselves."
This masterclass in deception—the painted horse masquerading as an exotic beast—captures the central tension of Ping Lu’s characters, who constantly navigate personal reinvention, historical displacement, and hidden identities across the shifting borders of East Asia.
Future Outlook: A New Chapter for International Literature
The resurrection and upcoming publication of To the East of the East mark a significant milestone not only for its creators, but for the broader landscape of translated fiction. It highlights the vulnerability of the translation pipeline, where brilliant works can easily slip through the cracks of institutional funding and traditional publishing models without active, grassroots advocacy from the translators themselves.
About the Creators
Ping Lu is the celebrated pen name of Taiwanese writer Lu Ping, whose literary achievements have earned her Taiwan’s prestigious National Award for the Arts. Her expansive bibliography includes the Taiwan National Literature Award-winning The Gaps (閹雞), the Golden Tripod Award-winning Heart Mandala (瓷禧), and the Wu San-lien Award. Her novels and short story collections—such as Love and Revolution, When Will My Love Return (妳們等候相疊如山), and The River Darkens (行走的樹)—have been translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Czech, and numerous other languages. To the East of the East adds a vital English-language dimension to her globally resonant oeuvre.
Jeremy Tiang is a celebrated novelist, playwright, and literary translator who has translated over thirty books from Chinese. His prominent translations include Zou Jingzhi’s Ninth Building, which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. As an original author, his novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize, and his short story collection It Never Rains on National Day was shortlisted for the same honor. Tiang’s dual expertise as both a fiction writer and a veteran translator uniquely positions him to navigate the stylistic demands of complex, multi-register international texts.
Conclusion
As To the East of the East prepares to meet its Anglophone audience, its turbulent journey serves as both a cautionary tale about the fragility of cultural exchange and an inspiring reminder of what can be achieved when literary craftsmanship meets persistent advocacy. Through Ping Lu’s hall-of-mirrors narrative and Jeremy Tiang’s careful, judicious translation, readers are invited into a richly layered world where borders dissolve, histories echo, and no one is quite who they seem.
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