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Literature in Translation
We are pleased to present the 2021 Columbia University Press Asian studies catalog. These books span many fields in Asian studies—history, politics, literary studies, philosophy, religion, and film—and reflect the interdisciplinary and global approach of our list.
First and foremost, we would like to congratulate Yurou Zhong, whose Chinese Grammatology: Script Revolution and Literary Modernity, 1916–1958 was recognized with an honorable mention by the Joseph Levenson Prize Post-1900 committee. We are also delighted to make available in English translation Ying-shih Yü’s classic The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China and Chin-shing Huang’s Confucianism and Sacred Space. Yuri Pines helps us to make sense of new archeological findings in Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript Xinian and Early Chinese Historiography. And Laura Moretti’s Pleasure in Profit offers a comprehensive reevaluation of seventeenth-century Japanese literature through the lens of trade publishing, from self-help to get rich quick genres.
In history and politics, Columbia continues its long tradition of publishing cutting-edge works that speak to Asia’s past and present. We are especially pleased to debut new histories of Asia that span a wide range of periods, from Audrey Truschke’s The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule to Eric Schluessel’s Land of Strangers: The Civilizing Project in Qing Central Asia. These works join our recent modern histories of the region, such as Yoshikuni Igarashi’s Japan, 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an Age of Mass Consumerism and Peter Hamilton’s Made in Hong Kong: Transpacific Networks and a New History of Globalization. In politics, Saori N. Katada takes a closer look at how Japan shapes the region’s economic order in Japan's New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific. And in U.S. Strategy in the Asian Century: Empowering Allies and Partners, Abraham M. Denmark provides an incisive account of the paths forward for American foreign policy in Asia.
Among the many new outstanding philosophy and religion titles in this year’s wide-ranging catalog, several deserve special attention. Other Minds by Sonam Kachru demonstrates that Vasubandhu’s theory of mind offers the first enactivist account in world philosophy. Avram Alpert’s A Partial Enlightenment explores Buddhism as it has been imagined in global modernist literature, concluding that personal and social change are possible only when we recognize that suffering is inevitable. And in Lineages of the Literary, Nicole Willock analyzes the writings of three Tibetan Buddhist scholars in the post-Mao era and shows how they by turns safeguarded, taught, and celebrated Tibetan Buddhist knowledge, practices, and institutions at a pivotal juncture in SinoTibetan history.
Columbia’s Asian studies list has, from its inception, been dedicated to providing quality translations and other teaching materials. Christopher Rea developed Chinese Film Classics, 1922–1949 specifically for classroom use, and the accompanying website and YouTube channel provide video lectures and subtitled films. Susan Chan Egan and Pai Hsien-yung’s A Companion to The Story of the Stone can help make teaching the epic text to undergraduates feasible and fun. Budding historians will enjoy the trove of primary documents presented by Fumiko Miyazaki, Kate Wildman Nakai, and Mark Teeuwen in Christian Sorcerers on Trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident. Minae Mizumura’s An I-Novel, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, will inspire conversations ranging from genre to identity, and Immanuel Kim’s rendition of Friend by Paek Nam-nyong is the first novel from the DPRK available in English translation.
Literature in Translation......................................3 Literature/Culture................................................7 Film/Art ............................................................13 History................................................................16 Politics/Economics...............................................26 Philosophy/Religion.............................................30 Best of the Backlist..............................................32 Ordering Information.........................................33
Manuscript queries and proposals can be sent to the following editors: Caelyn Cobb (cc4141@columbia.edu) for global history and politics. Christine Dunbar (cd2654@columbia.edu) for Asian humanities and translation. Wendy Lochner (wl2003@columbia.edu) for philosophy and religion.
For a complete listing of Columbia’s titles or for more information about any book in this catalog, visit our website, cup.columbia.edu.
Most titles in this catalog published by Columbia University Press are available worldwide from the press. If no UK price appears for a title, it is most likely available from Columbia only in the United States, its possessions, and Canada.
Titles published by The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, Transcript Publishing, Agenda Publishing, Jagiellonian University Press, and ibidem Press are available from Columbia only in North America. To order titles from these publishers in other parts of the world, please contact each press directly. A Companion to The Story of the Stone
A Chapter-by-Chapter Guide Susan Chan Egan and Pai Hsien-yung
The Story of the Stone is widely held to be the greatest work of Chinese literature. This book is a straightforward guide to a complex classic. Each chapter of the companion summarizes and comments on each chapter of the novel, providing English-speaking readers with the cultural context to enjoy the story and understand its world.
$35.00 / £30.00 paper 978-0-231-19945-2 $145.00 / £120.00 cloth 978-0-231-19944-5 March 2021 288 pages 9 illus.
Faraway
A Novel Lo Yi-Chin
Translated by Jeremy Tiang
In Taiwanese writer Lo Yi-Chin’s Faraway, a fictionalized version of the author finds himself stranded in mainland China attempting to bring his comatose father home. Lo offers a deft portrayal of the rift between China and Taiwan through an intimate view of a father-son relationship that bridges this divide.
$25.00 / £22.00 paper 978-0-231-19395-5 $100.00 / £82.00 cloth 978-0-231-19394-8 September 2021 304 pages
MODERN CHINESE LITERATURE FROM TAIWAN
Samak the Ayyar
A Tale of Ancient Persia Translated by Freydoon Rassouli
Adapted by Jordan Mechner
The adventures of Samak, a trickster-warrior hero of Persia’s thousand-year-old oral storytelling tradition, are beloved in Iran. Translated from the original Persian by Freydoon Rassouli and adapted by Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, this timeless masterwork can now be enjoyed by English-speaking readers.
$28.00 / £22.00 paper 978-0-231-19879-0 $120.00 / £100.00 cloth 978-0-231-19878-3 August 2021 456 pages Suncranes and Other Stories
Modern Mongolian Short Fiction Translated by Simon Wickhamsmith
Suncranes and Other Stories showcases a range of powerful voices from Mongolia’s modern literary traditions. Spanning the years following the socialist revolution of 1921 through the early twenty-first century, these stories offer vivid portraits of nomads, revolution, and the endless steppe.
$25.00 / £20.00 paper 978-0-231-19677-2 $95.00 / £74.00 cloth 978-0-231-19676-5 July 2021 288 pages
The Membranes
A Novel Chi Ta-wei
Translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich
First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes—heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies—into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding.
$17.00 / £13.99 paper 978-0-231-19571-3 $65.00 / £54.00 cloth 978-0-231-19570-6 June 2021 160 pages
MODERN CHINESE LITERATURE FROM TAIWAN
An I-Novel
Minae Mizumura Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter in collaboration with the author
Minae Mizumura’s An I-Novel is a semiautobiographical work that takes place over the course of a single day in the 1980s. This formally daring novel radically broke with Japanese literary tradition and offers a luminous meditation on how a person becomes a writer.
$20.00 / £14.99 paper 978-0-231-19213-2 $80.00 / £62.00 cloth 978-0-231-19212-5 March 2021 344 pages 23 illus.
Other Moons
Vietnamese Short Stories of the American War and Its Aftermath Translated and edited by Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock Foreword by Bao Ninh
In this anthology, Vietnamese writers describe their experience of what they call the American War and its lasting legacy through the lens of their own vital artistic visions. The twenty short stories collected in Other Moons range from the intensely personal to narratives that deal with larger questions of remembrance, trauma, and healing.
$27.00 / £21.00 paper 978-0-231-19609-3 $95.00 / £78.00 cloth 978-0-231-19608-6 2020 272 pages
Sachiko
A Novel Endō Shūsaku
Translated by Van C. Gessel
In novels such as Silence, Endō Shūsaku examined the persecution of Japanese Christians in different historical eras. Sachiko, set in Nagasaki in the painful years between 1930 and 1945, is the story of two young people trying to find love during yet another period in which Japanese Christians were accused of disloyalty to their country.
$28.00 / £22.00 paper 978-0-231-19731-1 $95.00 / £78.00 cloth 978-0-231-19730-4 2020 432 pages
WEATHERHEAD BOOKS ON ASIA
Friend
A Novel from North Korea Paek Nam-nyong Translated by Immanuel Kim
Paek Nam-nyong’s Friend is a tale of marital intrigue, abuse, and divorce in North Korea. This groundbreaking translation of one of North Korea’s most popular writers offers English-language readers a page-turner full of psychological tension as well as a revealing portrait of a society that is typically seen as closed to the outside world.
$20.00 / £16.99 paper 978-0-231-19561-4 $60.00 / £50.00 cloth 978-0-231-19560-7 2020 240 pages
WEATHERHEAD BOOKS ON ASIA
Fu Ping
A Novel Wang Anyi Translated by Howard Goldblatt
Fu Ping is a keenly observed portrait of the lives of lower-class women in Shanghai in the early years of the People’s Republic of China. Wang Anyi, one of contemporary China’s most acclaimed authors, explores the daily lives of migrants from rural areas and other people on the margins of urban life.
$18.00 / £13.99 paper 978-0-231-19323-8 $60.00 / £50.00 cloth 978-0-231-19322-1 2019 304 pages
