Anthologized without being told?

I recall a discussion in this list about translated books—books of literature, even—being reviewed without any mention of the translator.

Well, this is a little different.  I was getting my usual dose of enjoyment and enlightenment from a great book review by Perry Link in the New York Review of Books—in this case, a review of Yunte Huang’s The Big Red Book of Modern China Literature (along with a new book of Mao poems). It was from April 7, 2016.  I’m a little behind in my reading…  The Huang book has a generous assortment of authors and works, so out of curiosity I brought up the table of contents on Amazon.  I confess I am drawn to mentions of Shen Congwen—I’ll leave it to your imagination to guess how often I do Kinkley searches.  The anthology has excerpts from Border Town!  Wow, I thought, so there’s a fifth translation of that great work, so soon after mine?  Nope, Jeffrey Kinkley is acknowledged as the translator at the end.  Who knew?  Not me!  (W. W. Norton was the publisher of both books.) Well, I was listed as the translator, so I guess I should be grateful for small favors.

–Jeffrey Kinkley <jeffreykinkley@gmail.com

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