English-language writing about Hong Kong and much of Asia has long been the province of Western expatriates or writers passing through, but increasingly this work is being done by Asian authors like Xu Xi, who is of Chinese and Indonesian descent.
George Orwell, in his brilliant 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, wrote: "When one watches some tired [political] hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases … one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy".
The American voice has seeped into English-language writing (expect, perhaps, Indian) like radio interference.
His allegiance is to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, the French nouveau roman and post-structuralist modes of thought; with a few exceptions, such as William Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon, most English-language writing since modernism's heyday can be written off as naive, reactionary stuff.
0870 737 7737 29 Big Fiction Some outstanding names in English-language writing have long-awaited new novels out this year, but this doesn't mean the big prize shortlists are obvious, since many of them are from the wrong side of the Atlantic.
When Calabash was set up in 2001, part of its inspiration was both to give a platform to the best international English-language writing available and also to show would-be Jamaican writers the example of poets and novelists working at the top of their craft – "to hear the best of the best," says Henzell, "and to be inspired by that".
Borneman was widely read in European literature and, once settled in London, wasted no time bringing himself up to speed with developments in English-language writing, discovering a particular affinity with Hemingway and Joyce, not to mention American crime writers such as Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hammett.
"To me the most interesting aspect of the globalization of Granta is that it's creating a forum for the exchange of great writing that is not limited to a flow of English-language writing from Granta U.K. to each of the other countries but moves in all directions," said Roberto Feith, editorial director of Granta's Brazilian edition and an attendee at the April gathering.
When given English-language writing assignments, it is common for Chinese students to rely upon translating Chinese sources into English and passing it off as their own work, or simply copying and pasting directly from Wikipedia.
He then hid the letters in packages with English-language writing on them, in the hopes that they would be sold in American stores.
46 min: "I think your birdwatching problem is with sticking to the English language," writes Paulo Padilha.
