Jane Qian Liu is associate professor of Chinese and translation studies at the University of Warwick. She holds a DPhil in Oriental studies from the University of Oxford. She conducts research on comparative literature, the history of reading, and translation studies. In her spare time, she writes short stories and novels in English and Chinese.
The title of Xiaolu Guo’s new novel, Call Me Ishmaelle (Chatto & Windus, 2025), instantly reminds us of the famous opening of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, “Call me Ishm…