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Questions frequently asked by book clubs about Lost in Translation:

Why do you write books about China?

Eren Obo

China is such a complex and fascinating place, so vital, changing so rapidly, that I feel an urge to try to acquaint people with it, at least through one small window. There is a sense in China now that the Chinese know much more about our world than we know about theirs. I believe that no matter how much excellent nonfiction and journalism you read, there are certain things about a foreign culture you really only absorb through novels and movies. So I try to entertain and compel the reader, but also to inform. I myself love erudition in a novel. I appreciate the richness certain books are able to impart. That’s what I strive to do.

How does that fit into Lost in Translation?

With each book I have picked a different backdrop, deeply researched it, and used it to create a world around my story. In my new book, The Last Chinese Chef, (Houghton Mifflin, May '07), it’s the world of serious Chinese cuisine. In my second book, A Cup of Light (Dell, 2002), it was the universe of high-end Chinese porcelain. In Lost in Translation, it was archeology.

The idea for Lost in Translation came to me when I myself was working as a translator on an archeological expedition to Ningxia and Inner Mongolia in 1991. The Chinese and American teams I was assisting were not searching for Peking Man. They were studying life and settlement patterns of the region's neolithic peoples, and comparing those findings with what they had discovered in geographically similar areas of the United States. Two things happened on this expedition. First, I realized that an interpreter, as a character, had great dramatic potential. Second, I discovered I was pregnant with my second child. Since it was clear I would not be able to return to China for a while, I began to think in terms of writing a novel about an interpreter. While in the desert I had plenty of time to talk with the Chinese and American scientists about possibilities for an archeology-based story. Once I settled on Peking Man, they generously shared their expertise with me and one scientist, Dr. David Madsen, even read the manuscript twice to correct my errors.

Lucile at work on Peking Man bust

The other inspiration for Lost in Translation was definitely the life of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. As a Jesuit priest who found many fossils in the course of his work as an archeologist and thus argued for evolution, he was banished to China by the Vatican in the 1920s. Much has been written about Teilhard’s life, but I took special interest in his longstanding relationship with the divorced American sculptress Lucile Swan, a relationship complicated by the fact that he was a Catholic priest sworn to celibacy. I found their relationship to be beautifully documented in the more than twenty years of letters and diary entries published by Georgetown University Press in 1992, The Letters of Teilhard de Chardin and Lucile Swan. In their real-life struggles with the nature of love and commitment I found the ideal mirror for the developing love affair between Alice Mannegan and Lin Shiyang. These two intertwining love stories form the heart of Lost in Translation.

The novel portrays a Chinese attitude of condescension toward foreigners. Is this accurate?

Chinese look down on Westerners but  they also look up to Westerners. The early 20th century writer Lu Xun probably said it best with his famous observation that ‘The trouble with the Chinese attitude toward foreigners is that we can look up at them as Gods or down at them as barbarians but never straight across as equals.’ Some sinologists say that what sometimes reads as a habitual Chinese condescension toward foreigners is rooted in a deep insecurity about an insular culture which, though powerful and possessed of a long history, has also for much of the last 150 years been left behind by the rest of the world.

In the novel, Alice is powerfully affected by the difficulty of feeling accepted in China, but this is because she feels driven to gain acceptance and admission. This is her emotional focus; it's hardly the same for every expat. Still, the fact remains that as a society China is not essentially welcoming to outsiders. After thirty years of working in China I have known many foreigners who chose to live and work there. The vast majority, after some years, return to the West.

Do you regard China as a possible enemy?

Outside Eren Obo

Goodness, no. I regard that viewpoint as paranoid. China and the U.S. are the two new superpowers and will have to learn to work together. China does not have an imperialistic history, outside of their brutal annexing and control of their border states such as Tibet and Xinjiang. China has always secured its borders (often cruelly) but never ventured beyond to conquer.

I do see China as a competitor. This has never been a negative perception for me, but a thought that brought the excitement of opportunity. The reason I went so far out of my way to start a business in China in the 1970s was my conviction that by the end of the 20th century, China would become a major world power – economically, diplomatically, culturally. Now it seems like a no-brainer, but back then a lot of people thought I was nuts.

So having said I do believe the Chinese government manipulates us brilliantly. We have a myopic obsession with human rights issues. Do we perhaps focus on this (ignoring issues such as the environment which are arguably far more crucial) because democracy is our favorite export? Or are we just hopelessly stuck in post Cold War thinking? Whatever the reason, our myopia gives China a perfect means to exact concessions whenever desired. Springing a dissident or two from jail always seems to  win a trade concession, loosen up entrance to the WTO, or even nab the 2008 Olympics. It works every time. Said dissidents are powerful symbols to us Americans. Unfortunately they tend not to be the ones who are fighting for rights and freedom in China. That battle is being fought elsewhere: by the people who riot when their real property is taken away, by those who protest when some corrupt industry pollutes their living area, or by those brave enough to sue the government to redress wrongs. The only way China will reach the kinds of freedoms and rights we hope for will be through the society’s gradual movement toward an actual rule of law. We could probably help in this process, but unfortunately we don’t try too hard.

It’s too bad, because China is in the midst of a massive environmental crisis. How tragic that we don’t use the impending ecological disaster for our basket of bargaining chips, instead of focusing on a few dissidents whose importance is often trivial except for what they symbolize to the American people.

Alice Mannegan is such an unusual literary character. Is she based on your own life?

Many people ask me that. No, she is not based on me at all. She is based on a real person, though – on a man I was in love with when I was younger. His father, he believed, had committed a racially motivated murder. The father was never brought to justice. The son left the U.S., moved to China, and acted out with Chinese women the way Alice acts out with Chinese men. Throughout his adult life he tried to get his father to talk with him about the murder, always without success. Then the son was killed in an accident at the age of thirty-one, taking his anguish over this matter with him. By putting his troubled soul in the character of Alice, perhaps I hoped to bring some resolution to him, after his death.

Has the book done well?

Lost in Translation has done extremely well. It was a national bestseller in the U.S. and also in several European countries. It remains in print in multiple languages. It won the Kafka  Prize for the best work of fiction by any American woman, chosen by a jury over the other finalists Barbara Kingsolver, Lorrie Moore, and Joyce Carol Oates. It also won the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association’s annual five-state book award, another juried prize. It was a NYT Notable Book, a NYT Editor’s Choice, and a Booksense pick. Film rights have been continuously optioned since the book’s publication.

Do you have additional questions about Lost in Translation? E-mail them to me, and those which are asked repeatedly will be entered here.