A review by abookishtype
Raise the Red Lantern: Three Novellas by Su Tong

3.0

It isn’t enough to translate Chinese literature into English. The translators do as much as they can to find the right words in English to express the ideas the original author put down, but readers have to be prepared for characters, plots, and references that come from a completely different tradition. I know that I’m missing things when I read Chinese literature. I keep trying, however, because I want to learn more about how people live and think in other parts of the world. I thought about the gaps in my knowledge a lot when I read Red Sorghum, by Mo Yan, and again when I read Raise the Red Lantern, a collection of three novellas by Su Tong (translated by Michael S. Duke). Each time I dive into a work of literature from China, I have to remind myself that the author is playing by different rules...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.