Executive Overview
In the ecosystem of international literature, the journey of a translated book from its original conception to foreign-language publication is rarely a straight line. It is a labyrinth of funding applications, editorial passes, serendipitous encounters, and commercial recalculations. Few recent titles illustrate this complex, often precarious lifecycle quite as vividly as To the East of the East, a sweeping novel by acclaimed Taiwanese author Ping Lu, translated into English by award-winning writer and translator Jeremy Tiang.
Nearly a decade after its initial translation was commissioned, completed, and quietly shelved due to a lack of a publisher, the manuscript has finally found a permanent international home with World Editions. Set across disparate geographies—spanning Taipei, Macau, and Beijing—and bouncing between the present day and the seventeenth century, the novel explores the fundamental fault lines of human connection. It is a book built on misrecognitions: between men and women, parents and children, husbands and wives, as well as broader geopolitical and existential divisions such as land and sea, imprisonment and escape, borders and freedom.
This piece explores the history of To the East of the East, drawing on an exclusive behind-the-scenes discussion between author Ping Lu and translator Jeremy Tiang. We examine the intricate mechanics of translating a novel that shifts fluidly between distinct regional registers of Chinese and historical eras, the challenges of rendering culture-specific literary devices for an Anglophone readership, and the remarkable twists of fate that ultimately rescued the dormant manuscript from obscurity. Furthermore, we contextualize this release within the broader landscape of contemporary Taiwanese literature in translation, offering a comprehensive look at the logistical, creative, and institutional forces shaping how literature travels across linguistic divides today.
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Detailed Chronology: From Creative Spark to Dormant Manuscript and Resurgence
To understand the long road traveled by To the East of the East, one must trace its development across three distinct phases: its genesis in Taiwan, its initial translation cycle in the mid-2010s, and its unexpected revival in the late 2020s.
Phase 1: The Germ and the Genesis
For Ping Lu, one of Taiwan’s most celebrated literary figures, the initial spark for the novel did not begin with a specific plot point or historical event. Rather, it started as an abstract meditation on the pervasiveness of miscommunication and misunderstanding in human affairs.
"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," Ping Lu reflects. She notes how these disconnects manifest on both micro and macro scales—interpersonally between romantic partners or family members, and structurally between humans and their environments. This conceptual framework provided a rich, varied imaginative landscape that allowed the narrative to roam freely across centuries and territories.
Phase 2: The First Translation and Editorial Pipeline
The English-language life of the novel began approximately ten years ago, when a Taiwanese literary agency approached Jeremy Tiang with a proposal to translate the book. Tiang, an established novelist, playwright, and translator who has translated more than thirty books from Chinese, was already familiar with the agency’s work. Trusting their judgment, he agreed to take on the project.
Over the subsequent year, Tiang worked steadily on the manuscript, producing a complete English translation. Upon submission, the work underwent a rigorous editing process guided by Anna Holmwood, an acclaimed translator and editor.
Despite completing this crucial editorial stage, the project hit a brick wall. In the shifting landscape of international publishing, translations often require a champion within a publishing house to take a financial and artistic risk. Without an immediate home, the manuscript drifted. Tiang, juggling numerous other literary commitments—including his own novels and translations of works like Zou Jingzhi’s Ninth Building (which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize)—eventually lost track of the book’s institutional status.
Phase 3: The Resurgence and Revival
The turning point for To the East of the East occurred late last year. While checking in with the project’s original institutional funder—the National Museum of Taiwan Literature—Tiang discovered a startling status update: despite the completed translation and editorial polishing, no commercial publisher had ever acquired the rights, and the project had slipped into dormancy.
Refusing to let years of collaborative labor fade into oblivion, Tiang asked if he could take the reins and attempt to find the manuscript a home. He sent the completed, edited text directly to World Editions, an independent press with a strong track record for publishing bold international fiction and a personal professional relationship with Tiang.
Sensing an immediate alignment with their editorial mandate, World Editions recognized the book’s potential. They readily agreed to take it on, rescuing a vital piece of Taiwanese literature from literary purgatory and scheduling it for a long-overdue global launch.
Supporting Context & Metrics: Navigating Polyphonic Registers and Cultural Nuance
Translating To the East of the East was not merely an exercise in substituting Chinese vocabulary with English equivalents; it required navigating a complex web of linguistic registers, historical periods, and literary motifs.
Linguistic Stratification: Taipei, Macau, Beijing, and the 17th Century
One of the primary technical hurdles of the novel is its geographical and temporal breadth. The narrative moves fluidly between Taipei, Macau, and Beijing. Because each of these regions employs a distinct variant and flavor of Chinese, the original text carries an underlying tension of place and dialect. Furthermore, the narrative leaps between the contemporary era and the seventeenth century, requiring the author to manage multiple distinct historical voices.
For the translator, this meant maintaining a delicate balancing act. "As one might expect with a book that roams between Taipei, Macau, and Beijing… and also between the present day and the 17th century, there was a fair amount of switching between different registers to capture all the various voices of the original," Tiang notes.
The Riddle of the Heart: Translating Intangible Nuance
Perhaps the most illuminating window into Tiang’s translation methodology involves a specific scene in which two characters discuss a cryptic word game.
In the original Chinese text, the interaction revolves around a clever visual and linguistic pun. A character attempts to flirt with a man by asking him to solve a riddle: adding a heart radical ($text忄$) to the characters for "burnt troops" ($text焦兵$), which transforms them into the character for "fragile" ($text憔悴$).
For a translator, such culture-specific linguistic mechanics present a classic dilemma: how to make a hyper-specific textual joke legible to an international audience that may possess zero knowledge of Chinese characters without breaking the narrative spell.
Tiang made a deliberate, calculated editorial decision not to explain the mechanics of Chinese character formation. He recognized that bogging the reader down in an academic or technical footnote about radicals and stroke orders would derail the emotional momentum of the scene.
"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," Tiang explains. "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 prioritizing emotional resonance over encyclopedic fidelity, the translation preserves the scene’s psychological intimacy.
The Autonomous Translation Process
Interestingly, despite the deep interpretive work required, the translation process operated entirely independently. Ping Lu had no direct involvement in the English translation, and the two creators did not communicate during the drafting phase.
Yet, this distance did not hinder the final product. Tiang found that the meticulous craftsmanship of the source text provided all the navigational aids he required. "Although I had no communication with Ping Lu during the translation process, the world(s) of the book are so fully and vividly realized that I felt everything I needed was right there on the page."
Metaphors of Reflection and Deception
To encapsulate the spirit of To the East of the East, both author and translator rely on striking metaphors that mirror the novel’s thematic core of identity, illusion, and duplicity.
Ping Lu approaches her work through the lens of classical aesthetics and minimalist music. When writing, she frequently listens to Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror). "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."
Meanwhile, Tiang points to the striking cover art chosen by World Editions as a perfect visual metaphor for the entire book. The cover features what appears to be a zebra, but upon closer inspection, reveals itself to be a white horse with stripes painted onto its hide. Though this deceptive creature is only briefly mentioned once within the pages of the novel, Tiang argues it serves as a potent symbol for the narrative’s broader thesis: "in which no one is quite who they pretend to be, even to themselves."
Official Statements and Creator Profiles
To fully appreciate the weight of this publication, it is essential to look at the remarkable credentials of the minds behind To the East of the East.
Ping Lu: A Literary Luminary
Writing under the pen name Lu Ping, Ping Lu is one of Taiwan’s most distinguished and decorated contemporary authors. Her literary accolades reflect a career defined by formal experimentation, historical inquiry, and psychological depth. She has received:
- Taiwan’s National Award for the Arts
- The Taiwan National Literature Award for The Gaps (閰王府 / The Gaps)
- The Golden Tripod Award for Heart Mandala (心經)
- The prestigious Wu San-lien Award
Her extensive bibliography—which includes novels and short story collections such as Love and Revolution, When Will My Love Return (愛別離苦), and The River Darkens (黑水)—has transcended linguistic barriers, earning translation into French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Czech, and numerous other languages. Her work consistently interrogates the intersections of personal memory, political trauma, and social displacement.
Jeremy Tiang: Translating the Sinophone World
Jeremy Tiang is a triple threat in the contemporary literary sphere: a novelist, a playwright, and an elite literary translator who has brought over thirty books from Chinese into English. His translation work is marked by a rigorous attention to voice, rhythm, and cultural context. Notable achievements include:
- Being longlisted for the International Booker Prize for his translation of Zou Jingzhi’s Ninth Building.
- Winning the Singapore Literature Prize for his original novel State of Emergency.
- Receiving a shortlist nomination for the Singapore Literature Prize for his short story collection It Never Rains on National Day.
Tiang’s dual perspective as both an original creator and a translator gives him a rare vantage point on the mechanics of storytelling, allowing him to navigate the treacherous waters of cross-cultural adaptation with uncommon grace.
Future Outlook: The Horizon for Taiwanese Literature in Translation
The eventual rescue and upcoming publication of To the East of the East by World Editions signals more than just a personal victory for its author and translator; it serves as an encouraging bellwether for the broader ecosystem of Taiwanese literature in the global marketplace.
For decades, Sinophone literature available to Anglophone readers was heavily skewed toward Mainland Chinese authors or canonical historical texts. However, institutional backing from organizations like the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, coupled with the tireless advocacy of independent translators like Jeremy Tiang and boutique publishers like World Editions, is slowly redressing this imbalance.
As international readers increasingly demand complex, polyphonic narratives that resist monolithic interpretations of identity, novels like To the East of the East—with their meditations on historical dislocation, fractured geography, and internal deception—find fertile ground. The book’s journey from a dormant manuscript to an active international release demonstrates that while the pathways of translation can be labyrinthine and unpredictable, enduring works of art ultimately possess an intrinsic gravity that pulls them toward the light.
When To the East of the East finally reaches bookstores, it will arrive not merely as a translated novel, but as a testament to perseverance: a mirror reflecting mirrors, rescued from silence to speak across oceans, languages, and time.
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