Geling Yan
- Writer
Geling Yan is one of the most acclaimed contemporary novelists and screenwriters writing in the Chinese language today and a well-established writer in English. Born in Shanghai, she served with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) during the Cultural Revolution, starting at age 12 as a dancer in an entertainment troupe.
After serving for over a decade with the PLA (including tours in Tibet and as a war correspondent during the Sino-Vietnam border conflict), Geling Yan was discharged with a rank equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel. She published her first novel in 1985 and ever since has produced a steady stream of novels, short stories, novellas, essays and scripts. Her best-known novels in English are Little Aunt Crane published in the UK by Random House affiliate Harvill Secker; The Flowers of War, published in the U.S. by The Other Press and elsewhere by Random House's Harvill Secker; The Banquet Bug (The Uninvited in its UK edition - written directly in English); and The Lost Daughter of Happiness, (translated by Cathy Silber) both published by Hyperion in the US and Faber & Faber in the UK. She has also published a novella and short story collection called White Snake and Other Stories, translated by Lawrence A. Walker and published by Aunt Lute Books.
Several of Geling Yan's works have been adapted for film and television, including internationally distributed films Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (directed by Joan Chen) and Siao Yu (directed by Sylvia Chang; produced by Ang Lee. Chinese director Zhang Yimou (To Live, Raise the Red Lantern) made The Flowers of War, a big-budget film based on her work set during the 1937 Rape of Nanking, starring Academy Award winning actor Christian Bale, and Coming Home (aka Return) , based on her novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi . She has also written numerous scripts based on her own and other authors' work, both in English and Chinese, including a script for a biopic on the iconic Peking opera star Mei Lanfang for director Chen Kaige (released as Forever Enthralled starring Leon Lai and Ziyi Zhang. Additionally, she wrote the script for Dangerous Liaisons, a Chinese-language film directed by South Korean director Hur Jin-ho and starring Ziyi Zhang, Jang Dong Gun and Cecilia Cheung. Her novel Fang Hua is the basis a film of the same name (English title Youth) directed by Chinese director Feng Xiaogang, which led at the Chinese box office after its release in mid-December 2017.
Geling Yan is affiliated with the Chinese Writers' Association of the People's Republic of China, with Hollywood's Writers' Guild of America, west.
Geling Yan went to the United States at the end of 1989 for graduate study. She holds a bachelor's degree in literature from Wuhan University and a Master's in Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from Columbia College, Chicago. To date she has published over 20 books in various editions in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the US, the UK and elsewhere; has won over 30 literary and film awards; and has had her work adapted or written scripts for numerous film, TV and radio works. Her works have been translated into sixteen languages: Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese, and her English-language novel The Banquet Bug/The Uninvited was translated into Chinese. She currently lives in Berlin, Germany, and travels frequently to China.
After serving for over a decade with the PLA (including tours in Tibet and as a war correspondent during the Sino-Vietnam border conflict), Geling Yan was discharged with a rank equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel. She published her first novel in 1985 and ever since has produced a steady stream of novels, short stories, novellas, essays and scripts. Her best-known novels in English are Little Aunt Crane published in the UK by Random House affiliate Harvill Secker; The Flowers of War, published in the U.S. by The Other Press and elsewhere by Random House's Harvill Secker; The Banquet Bug (The Uninvited in its UK edition - written directly in English); and The Lost Daughter of Happiness, (translated by Cathy Silber) both published by Hyperion in the US and Faber & Faber in the UK. She has also published a novella and short story collection called White Snake and Other Stories, translated by Lawrence A. Walker and published by Aunt Lute Books.
Several of Geling Yan's works have been adapted for film and television, including internationally distributed films Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (directed by Joan Chen) and Siao Yu (directed by Sylvia Chang; produced by Ang Lee. Chinese director Zhang Yimou (To Live, Raise the Red Lantern) made The Flowers of War, a big-budget film based on her work set during the 1937 Rape of Nanking, starring Academy Award winning actor Christian Bale, and Coming Home (aka Return) , based on her novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi . She has also written numerous scripts based on her own and other authors' work, both in English and Chinese, including a script for a biopic on the iconic Peking opera star Mei Lanfang for director Chen Kaige (released as Forever Enthralled starring Leon Lai and Ziyi Zhang. Additionally, she wrote the script for Dangerous Liaisons, a Chinese-language film directed by South Korean director Hur Jin-ho and starring Ziyi Zhang, Jang Dong Gun and Cecilia Cheung. Her novel Fang Hua is the basis a film of the same name (English title Youth) directed by Chinese director Feng Xiaogang, which led at the Chinese box office after its release in mid-December 2017.
Geling Yan is affiliated with the Chinese Writers' Association of the People's Republic of China, with Hollywood's Writers' Guild of America, west.
Geling Yan went to the United States at the end of 1989 for graduate study. She holds a bachelor's degree in literature from Wuhan University and a Master's in Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from Columbia College, Chicago. To date she has published over 20 books in various editions in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the US, the UK and elsewhere; has won over 30 literary and film awards; and has had her work adapted or written scripts for numerous film, TV and radio works. Her works have been translated into sixteen languages: Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese, and her English-language novel The Banquet Bug/The Uninvited was translated into Chinese. She currently lives in Berlin, Germany, and travels frequently to China.
