Translated into English for the very first time, Stories of the Sahara is the travelogue-memoir from fifteen-million-copy bestselling author Sanmao
Sanmao, born Chen Mao Ping, was a novelist, writer, educator and translator. Born in China in 1943, she grew up in Taiwan. She studied in Taiwan, Spain and Germany before moving to the Sahara desert with her Spanish husband, a scuba diver and underwater engineer. In 1976, she gained fame with the publication of her first book, Stories of the Sahara. Her husband died while diving in 1979, and Sanmao returned to Taiwan the following year. From 1976 until her death in 1991, she published more than twenty books. Mike Fu is a Brooklyn-based writer, translator and editor. He is a cofounder and editor of The Shanghai Literary Review, a transnational English language journal for arts and literature, and the assistant dean for global initiatives at Parsons School of Design.
A role model far ahead of her time . . . Now, mainland-born and
Taiwanese-raised Sanmao is taking her rightful place in the
pantheon of female travel writers with the English-language
publication of Stories of the Sahara . . . Her confessional style,
which can be painfully honest but is always self-aware and shot
through with humour, fits perfectly in the age of #MeToo, despite
the book being written five decades earlier . . . Her candidness
about her marriage and life, along with her love of challenging
convention, explains why Sanmao has been a heroine for Chinese
women . . . Sanmao deserves all the praise, even if it has been a
long time coming
*South China Morning Post*
Reading their stories on this rain-swept island, far from either
Taiwan or the Sahara, what seduced me most was the combination of
Sanmao’s voice and her indomitable spirit – a spirit that manages
to reconcile her dream to be "the first female explorer to cross
the Sahara" with the reality of the grinding hardship of settled
life in a wasteland
*Spectator*
Stories of the Sahara has endured for generations of young
Taiwanese and Chinese women yearning for independence from
conservative social norms … Her prose, which oscillates between
memoir and fiction, has a laconic elegance that echoes the Beat
poets. It can also be breezy, a remarkable quality at a time when
her homeland, Taiwan, was under martial law
*New York Times*
A hypnotic meditation on love and loneliness in a foreign place.
Writing with frankness and vulnerability, Sanmao’s constant
questioning of her insecurities and flaws is remarkably human, and
nothing remains beyond the boundaries of her probing eye . . . Mike
Fu’s gorgeous translation brings to live Sanmao’s evocative
descriptions of the Sahrawi communities in which she lives, along
with her wit and her gift for capturing life’s absurdities. Stories
of the Sahara is a record of one person’s fierce refusal to follow
a path laid down for her by the rest of the world, but it is also a
celebration of the complexities of being an outsider, and
ultimately, an ode to freedom
*Paris Review Books of the Year*
Ground-breaking . . . Sanmao wrote breezily but she captured the
complexities of ‘learning the art of living here’ . . . A
compelling tale of someone who was enraptured but uneasy, and
Sanmao’s pluck is admirable
*Geographical*
Ground-breaking . . . Coloured by Sanmao's memories, this
travelogue takes us from eye-opening experiences in desert
bathhouses to divine rainstorms, while reminding us that adventures
into the unknown are key
*Wanderlust*
Riveting reissue aged like a good wine . . . A valuable record
*Irish Times*
An enduring cultural icon and figure of quixotic fascination . . .
Every story conveys Sanmao's infectious capacity for wonder
*Sharlene Teo, author of 'Ponti'*
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