New Books In Literature

Short story writing, novel writing, and translating require a variety of skills and strengths that are hardly ever found in a single person. Ken Liu is one of those rare individuals who has them all. He is perhaps best known for short stories like The Paper Menagerie, which (according to his Wikipedia entry) was the first work of fiction to earn Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards. But this year he’s making waves with two longer projects, which are the focus of his New Books interview: his translation of Cixin Liu‘s The Three-Body Problem and his debut novel The Grace of Kings. The Three-Body Problem has been a break-out success in China for Cixin Liu, who has won China’s Galaxy Award for science fiction nine times. The Three-Body Problem is also the first hard science-fiction novel by an author from the People’s Republic of China to be translated into English. Ken Liu (who is not related to Cixin Liu) says sales numbers for science fiction in China would be the envy of American pub