March Book Club - The Unfilial

Join us this month to discuss The Unfilial at our March book club! 

When: 26/3/26 18:00 start, doors open from 17:50

OR 28/3/26 10:00 start, doors open from 9:50

Where: 26a Crwys Road, CF24 4NL

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You can order the book here to pick up from the shop. 

The Unfilial - £11.99

Book club discount, 10% off - £10.79

Tickets to the book club are free but we would like you to register so that we can keep track of numbers. As it is a free event we would appreciate if you bought the book from us as that allows us to keep running events like this. However if you have a copy already feel free to sign up for just a ticket.

If you would like to book a place but you already have the book you can do that here.

Once you have signed up we will send you an email confirmation (this is separate to the automatic email from Shopify to confirm payment). We will then send an email when the book is ready to pick up. This may be included in the initial email if we already have the stock.

Translated fiction book club runs every other month, the months in between we have a general book club. 

About the book:

If it runs in the family, you better get moving

Modern China moves fast, leaving its people trailing behind. The mirage of a picture-perfect home compels some to gamble away the family house, while others have to live with debts of a shameful past. Nevertheless, when something inevitably cracks, it’s always the women who are left to pick up the pieces.

Yao Emei shines a brutally honest light on the crumbling foundations of the Chinese family unit with scalpel-sharp precision. In these four short stories, she sensitively depicts the struggle to escape a vicious cycle of abuse where no one comes out looking good.

To keep things simple, don’t ask Dr Feng’s wife about what her husband’s got up to lately, or Elder Sister about where her son’s gone. Most importantly, beware the enigmatic Gran trading lives on the maternity ward.

Come inside – or stare through the window – at your peril: after all, what’s a closet without its skeletons?

About the author:

Yao Emei is an author of books for both adults and children. Her work has been translated from Chinese into English, Russian, German, Japanese , Korean, and other languages. She has won the People’s Literature award, the Selection of Novella award, and the Shanghai Literature Excellent Novella Award. Some of her work have earned a place on various annual lists including the Douban 2021 Annual Reading List.

About the translators:

Honey Watson is a science fiction writer and translator living in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is a translator of both fiction and non-fiction from Mandarin into English, holding degrees from University College London and Peking University, Beijing. Her debut novel, Lessons in Birdwatching, will be released by Angry Robot books in August 2023.

Dr Martin Ward is a translator and Associate Professor of Chinese and Japanese Translation at the University of Leeds. He is also a fellow of Advance HE, a member of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST), and foreign expert of the Translators Association of China (TAC). Martin is the Founder of the East Asian Translation Pedagogy Advance (EATPA) network. He has also been published in academic journals like The Translator and he is co-editor of two edited volumes on teaching translation and interpreting and live subtitling (Routledge, 2024).

Olivia Milburn is professor of Chinese language and literature at Seoul National University, where she has now been employed for over a decade. She was first drawn to Chinese literature after reading an English translation of the classic novel The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin. She completed her first degree in Chinese at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, a master’s in Oriental studies at Downing College, University of Cambridge, and a doctorate in classical Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. In addition to her work in Seoul, she has served as a lecturer, a visiting professor and a visiting scholar at universities in London, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore. She has authored several books including Cherishing Antiquity: The Cultural Construction of an Ancient Chinese Kingdom, The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan and Urbanization in Early and Medieval China: Gazetteers for the City of Suzhou. In collaboration with Christopher Payne, she has translated two spy novels by Mai Jia, including the bestselling Decoded, from Chinese to English. In 2018, Milburn’s translation work was recognised by the Chinese government with a Special Book Award of China, which honours contributions to bridging cultures and fostering understanding.

Will Spence is a freelance literary translator based in London. Works he has translated include The Promise: Love and Loss in Modern China by Xinran and China Adorned: Ritual and Custom of Ancient Cultures, an encyclopaedia of the fashion, adornment, and rituals of Chinese ethnic minority groups. He has lectured on translation practice and theory at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.