A Few Posts Related to my BBC Radio 3 Doc – A Chinese Odyssey: Artists, Poets and Exiles in Interwar London – Xiao Qian’s Etching of a Tormented Age

Posted: February 11th, 2022 | No Comments »

Hired in August 1941 George Orwell was organising talks for the BBC’s Indian and Eastern Services. Orwell was keen to read Xiao Qian’s study of contemporary Chinese literature, Etching of a Tormented Age…

Xiao Chen’s book was published in the P.E.N. Books series (by George Allen & Unwin), the organisation founded in 1921 in London to promote and protect writers. With the repeated PEN logo design to cover. Orwell was keen to read Etching of a Tormented Age after beiung recommeneded the book by his colleague at the BBC Eastern Service William Empson (see my previous post) and Qian’s friend the novelist E M Forster. The two had met at the Tagore Memorial Meeting organised by the PEN Club in 1941.

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