The English Class
Ouyang Yu
978-0-9805717-8-3
$32.95 Trade paperback
400 pages
In store: 1 September 2010
All rights: Transit Lounge

‘an utterly authentic story which deepens our understanding of both Chinese and Australian culture, an epic journey across languages and cultures, recounted with all Ouyang Yu’s compelling honesty and passion.’ Alex Miller

‘The English Class gives us a vividly remembered China that has changed beyond recognition and a protagonist whose life is equally full of twists and turns. But more than that it’s a book of language, creatively used, explored, challenged. How do we make sense of things, how do we live, how do we express ourselves, in this unruly, unreliable, irrepressible medium? Ouyang Yu asks those questions like no one else, and the experience is surprising, exhilarating and moving.’  Nicholas Jose

At the end of the Cultural Revolution in China in the late 1970s Jing, an educated youth (zhishi qingnian) who has spent a few years as a peasant in the countryside, becomes a truck driver in a provincial shipyard. He manages to teach himself English in adverse circumstances while driving his truck, eventually passing the examination to get into the English Class at Donghu University. There, he meets with classmates from vastly different cultural backgrounds and falls in love with Deirdre, the estranged partner of Dr Wagner the English teacher. This engaging and masterful novel explores the aspiration of many to migrate to English speaking countries. Like much of Ouyang’s work it subtly deconstructs the mechanisms of colonialism against an increasingly vibrant Chinese economy. The vivid fictional life of a Chinese truck driver who aspires to the western life is beautifully and evocatively realised.

The English Class is a triumph, a novel at once wise, brave and entertaining.

Ouyang Yu obtained his BA in English and American Literature from Wuhan University and his MA in Australian and English literature at East China Normal University in Shanghai before moving to Australia in early 1991. He has since published 52 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, literary translation and criticism in English and Chinese languages. His books include his award-winning novel, The Eastern Slope Chronicle (2002), his collections of poetry, Songs of the Last Chinese Poet (1997) and The Kingsbury Tales (2008), his translations in Chinese, The Female Eunuch (1991) and The Man Who Loved Children (1998), and his book of criticism, Chinese in Australian Fiction: 1888-1988 (USA, 2008). Some of his recent publications include On the Smell of an Oily Rag: speaking English, thinking Chinese and living Australian (Wakefield, 2008), a book of creative non-fiction, and The Kingsbury Tales: a novel (Brandl & Schlesinger, 2008), a book of poetry. In 2009, five of his books were published in China, including a translation into Chinese of The Masterpiece by Anna Enquist, a Dutch novelist. The author acknowledges the invaluable support of the Australia Council in the writing and development of his major new novel, The English Class. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

More at:  www.ouyangyu.com.au

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.