Adjunct Associate Professor of Writing Jeremy Tiang will publish their translation of Zhang Yueran’s Women, Seated, in August with Riverhead Books. Tiang won a Pen Translates Award for their previous translation of Zhang Yueran, her novel Cocoon.
In modern Beijing, a politically prominent family becomes vulnerable under the scrutiny of a government investigation. Their trusted nanny, Yu Ling, who has meticulously served the family and cared for their only son for years, knows their secrets and must make a choice. As it turns out, Yu Ling has secrets of her own.
Women, Seated captures class, political, and gender dynamics in modern China on the backdrop of a thrilling family drama. In their review, Publishers Weekly called Women, Seated “A suspenseful and layered novel…Thanks to Zhang’s astute storytelling, characters that first appear to be villains become more complex as the years of disappointment and fractured ambitions that have shaped them come to light. This gripping drama offers an intimate view into contemporary China’s class dynamics.”
Jeremy Tiang (he/they) is a novelist, playwright and literary translator. They have translated over thirty books from across the Chinese-speaking world, including novels by Yeng Pway Ngon, Yan Ge, Lo Yi-Chin, Shuang Xuetao and Zhang Yueran; their translation of Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023. Their plays include Salesman之死 and A Dream of Red Pavilions, and translations of plays by Chen Si’an and Wei Yu-Chia. Their novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018, and their short story collection It Never Rains on National Day was shortlisted for the same prize. Tiang is the co-editor with Dr. Kavita Bhanot of the decolonial translation anthology Violent Phenomena. Originally from Singapore, they live in Flushing, Queens.
