New Chinese and Japanese language book clubs

This October and November, attend new Chinese and Japanese-language book clubs, created in partnership between Asian Library and alumniUBC. The events are an opportunity for alumni, current students, and other interested community members with advanced fluency in Chinese or Japanese, to form ties with others in their respective literary communities.

Each book club offers a separate meet and greet and discussion at a cost of $10 per person for both events. The cost includes a copy of the book distributed at Session 1 and light refreshments. More information can be found on the Asian Library’s website.

Chinese Language Book Club

Book selection:《中外文學交流史 中國-加拿大卷》Literary Interactions between China and Canada by Dr. Lai Fong Leung
Discussion facilitator: Dr. Lai Fong Leung, MA’76, PHD’86

The book Literary Interactions between China and Canada is one of the 17 volume project “Literary Interactions between China and Foreign Countries” produced by Shandong Education Press. This 450,000-word book is the first work to explore the topic and it lays the foundation for future studies. The book, largely based on primary sources, recreates the ethnic Chinese community as a cultural community from the mid-19^th century to the present.

Japanese Language Book Club 

Book selection: ねむりNemuri by Haruki Murakami
Discussion Facilitator: Kazuhiko Imai, MA student in the UBC Department of Asian Studies

Haruki Murakami is an internationally acclaimed author best known for dissolving boundaries between the fantastical and real. Yet this short story is rather intimately psychological, while the surrealistic feel is unquestionably present in the backdrop. Accompanied by interpretive illustrations by a German artist Kat Menschik, this short story, ね むり Nemuri (“Sleep”), was revived in 2010, after Murakami himself reworked the original version published more than twenty years ago.