Orville Schell on his novel, My Old Home: A Novel of Exile
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2021
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Veteran China scholar Orville Schell has written a dozen books on China, but his latest book — which Schell published at the age of 80 — is his first novel. My Old Home: A Novel of Exile is a bildungsroman that follows the life of Li Wende and his father, Li Shutong, from the early days of the Cultural Revolution to the tragedy of Tiananmen in 1989. This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Orville about the windows on China that nonfiction is unable to open but that fiction can; the challenges of writing a novel after a lifetime of publishing nonfiction; and continuity and change in modern Chinese history.
Recommendations:
Orville: The works of the famous writer and essayist Lu Xun, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, by Ai Weiwei (set for release in November 2021), and Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China, by Lian Xi.
Kaiser: Interior Chinatown: A Novel, by Charles Yu.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, folks, just a quick warning that today's episode is a discussion of a novel that many of you are going to want to read. |
| 0:06.4 | Orville Shell's My Old Home, a novel of exile. |
| 0:10.1 | So, spoiler alert, I will be discussing certain plot points of the novel with the author. |
| 0:15.0 | And if you plan to read the book and you don't want to be spoiled, please wait until you've read it or have gotten pretty far |
| 0:22.1 | into it before you listen to this program. Thanks a lot. Enjoy the show. |
| 0:36.7 | Welcome to the Cynical Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, |
| 0:40.4 | produced in partnership with SubChina. |
| 0:42.3 | Subscribe to SubChina's free email newsletter, SubChina access, and check out our relatively |
| 0:47.4 | new SubChina AM for a business-focused briefing that arrives in your inbox in the morning, |
| 0:51.8 | US time. |
| 0:52.3 | Visit our website at suppChina.com for a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is |
| 0:59.3 | reshaping the world. I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. |
| 1:04.9 | I'm delighted to welcome today an old friend whose towering accomplishments across an |
| 1:09.1 | incredible career have secured for him an enduring |
| 1:11.8 | place among scholars and commentators on contemporary China. Orville Schell is Arthur Ross Director of |
| 1:17.8 | the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. He is a former professor |
| 1:22.4 | and dean at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism, and has published |
| 1:27.1 | at least a dozen books on my account, most of which focus, yeah, Graduate School of Journalism, and has published at least a |
| 1:27.7 | dozen books by my account, most of which focus, yeah, on China, although there's books on farming |
| 1:32.8 | and books on meats and all sorts of other stuff. But today I am thrilled to be discussing |
| 1:37.8 | his latest book and first major novel, My Old Home, a novel of exile. And while it's a doorstop, it's a very, very engaging |
| 1:46.7 | read that I had trouble putting down, it covers a broad and truly dramatic swath of China's |
... |
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