October 2026: Ning Ken 宁肯

We are delighted to feature the author Ning Ken 宁肯 this month, to coincide with the publication and tour of the English translation of his multi-award-winning novel Tibetan Sky (tr. Thomas Moran), published by Sinoist Books.

Ning Ken (1959 – ), born and raised in Beijing, began his writing career as a poet, first publishing in 1982. From 1984 to 1986 he taught at a village school outside of Lhasa, Tibet. Beginning in 1987, Ning Ken’s lyric essays about Tibet contributed to the revitalising of the contemporary nonfiction prose essay, a literary genre of great importance in China. Ning Ken was a pioneer of online publication, and he posted his first novel, The City of Masks, serially on Sina.com. It was named the best internet novel of 2000; its 2001 printed version won a Lao She Literature Award in 2002 and was nominated for the 2009 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature. Ning Ken has since published the novels The Gate of Silence (2004), The Ringed Mountain (first published as The Ringed Woman in 2006), Tibetan Sky (2010) and Three Trios (2014), which was named as one of the best novels of its year by Asia Weekly. Tibetan Sky won several awards, including a Lao She Literature Award, and was nominated for the prestigious Mao Dun Literature Prize for best novel. Ning Ken’s short fiction has been collected in his books The Order of Things (2014) and Ukyi Lhamo (2015).

For many years, Ning Ken was the executive deputy editor of the literary magazine October. Ning Ken continues to live in Beijing, where he is affiliated with the Lao She Literary Institute and is an honorary member of the faculty of Beijing International Studies University. His works have been translated into Czech, English, French and Italian.

(Bio from Sinoist Books)

We are delighted to share extracts of Tibetan Sky in Chinese and English here. And if you are in Leeds, do come to hear Ning Ken and Thomas Moran talk about it in person in October.

Ning Ken finds mountains of meaning in philosophical novel based on the complicated history of Tibet

Wang Mojie’s dreams wilted in the Beijing heat. Leaving behind its constricting avenues at the end of the millennium,¹ the disillusioned academic seeks meaning in Lhasa. Instead, he finds Ukyi Lhamo. The soul of every party, her studied Parisian charms hide an inner rootlessness. Raised by a mother who stifled her beliefs to protect all she held dear, she searches for her grandmother,² the key to her lost heritage. Crossing paths among a gathering of self-exiled intellectuals living among the cool mountains, the two bond on the sidelines of a fierce philosophical debate. However, as Wang Mojie’s masochistic fantasies resurface, can they cling to what they mutually lack? Or was it never possible to make peace with zero?

¹ After a divorce sparked by his unusual perversions

² A Tibetan Buddhist nun with a severed aristocratic lineage

 Reviews

"Sardonic and erudite, it’s the only major literary treatment of Sino-Tibetan relations to appear in English in decades." - Andrew Rule, The Spectator

"At its heart …, this is a novel that contrasts alternative ways of being: the rigour of French philosophy duels with ancient Tibetan spirituality" - Rónán Hession, The Irish Times

"For all of its philosophical and formal flourishes, Tibetan Sky is carried forward by the intertwining quests of the two main characters, Wang and Ukyi, both of whom are dealing with traumas of histories past and recent."  - Jamyang Phuntsok, Mekong Review

"Reading Tibetan Sky is an extraordinary experience. This is a book that works on you, remaking you as you read. Daring, surprising and quietly subversive, the story unfurls in a way that feels organic, yet is masterfully wrought. Ning Ken captures moments and holds them up to the light, turning them this way and that so that we appreciate every angle." - Ann Morgan, author of Reading the World and Crossing Over

"Ning Ken is a most compelling storyteller from contemporary China. In Tibetan Sky, he takes us to a land known for its stunning mountains and rivers, and unique cultures and callings, as he ponders the limits of the mundane and the horizons beyond. The novel captures the human condition with lyrical subtleties and modernist provocations, rendering Tibet in a nuanced and dramatic light." - Professor David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University

"Ning Ken combines keen political critique with penetrating analysis of human nature, and he does so in entirely convincing fashion. Even more importantly, he has created a literary form that is entirely his own." - Mo Yan, Nobel Prize for Literature winner