Julia Lovell and Journey to the West: Talk and Q&A

For this lunchtime seminar we're delighted to be joined by Professor Julia Lovell to discuss her new translation of the classic Journey to the West, which has just been released by Penguin Classics.

All welcome! The event is free, but please register on our Eventbrite page. The Zoom link will be sent to registered attendees the morning of the talk.

Julia Lovell is Professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of The Great Wall and The Opium War, which won the 2012 Jan Michalski Prize. Her many translations of modern Chinese fiction into English include The Real Story of Ah Q and Other Tales of China. She writes about China for several newspapers, including The Guardian, Financial Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

You can read a review of Julia's new translation on the Asian Books Blog, by Nicky Harman.

Journey to the West was written (allegedly) by Wu Cheng’en in the sixteenth century and its hero, the sometimes eponymous Monkey, has enjoyed enduring popularity ever since. In addition to the stories in the Journey to the West, Monkey and his friends have featured in spin-off stories, cartoons, cartoon films, ballets, shadow plays, video games and much more... Julia Lovell’s translation is a delight and a tour de force. I hope that in taking a translator’s tweezers to it, I have managed to convey some of my admiration for its creativity and joie de vivre.

You can also find her 'in conversation' with Jeffrey Wasserstrom for the Los Angeles Review of Books.