Hungarian novel chosen as the book of the year in China

Magyarorszagkul.nlcafe.hu reported on the astonishing news that one of the world’s biggest countries chose a legendary Hungarian novel, László Krasznahorkai’s Satantango, as the best book of 2017 instead of picking a home artwork.

The writer shared the great news on his Facebook page and also congratulated Yu Zemin for the excellent translation.

The Beijing News, third best-selling daily has listed the recently published Chinese Satantango in the first place among the 10 best books of 2017.

Yu Zemin, born in Beijing, left his country in 1989 and learned Hungarian in an autodidactic way. He came to Hungary in 1991 and met his soon-to-be best friend János Herner in Szeged. He had many author and litterateur friends, and this is how Zemin met László Karsznahorkai in 1993, who gifted him Az ugrai fogoly (Prisoner form Ugra).

He accompanied László to China in 1998, after which he was curious to read his writings. In the beginning, he had to use a dictionary for every word and had to analyse the structure of every sentence. He thought to himself that he could as well translate the pages.

He developed his skills from time to time until he was asked to translate Satantango, which was published in Chinese in 2016.

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Source: https://magyarorszagkul.nlcafe.hu/