New chapter to begin for Chinese books in English

Some English-language books on China or written by Chinese to be released this year.[Photo provided to China Daily]

At the opening ceremony of the ongoing New Delhi World Book Fair, which features China as the guest of honor, writer Liu Zhenyun talks about one of his American fans.

The woman told Liu that she gets different pictures of China from watching CNN and BBC as compared to reading his works, say, the Cell Phone.

"One picture is weird, and one is with people just like us," the author says, quoting his fan.

Meanwhile, publishers are continuing to churn out more Chinese stories for English-language readers.

In the past year, President Xi Jinping's The Governance of China and sci-fi writer Liu Cixin's The Three Body Problem trilogy have been big hits.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is reading Liu Cixin's book and recommended it to his book club in October, saying: "It's a Chinese sci-fi work that has become so popular that there is now a Hollywood movie being made, based on it."

But as interest in Chinese fiction rises, there is also growing interest in up-to-date works on Chinese social and political issues.

Huo Xingchen, director of international cooperation at the Central Compilation & Translation Press, tells China Daily: "The Chinese economy is an area that global readers will continue to be interested in, and works on Chinese politics and foreign relations have begun to become trendy, including on ideas like the Chinese Dream and the Belt and Road Initiative."

Here are the details on some of the new English-language books on China or written by Chinese that domestic publishers will bring out in 2016.