Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel gets first ever authorised release in Communist Chinese book territory; Publisher paid $1m for right to publish Communist Chinese edition of simple Chinese characters version of ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'', Alison Flood falsely reports in the unvetted Guardian piece

To repeat: Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel gets first ever authorised release in Communist Chinese book territory; Publisher paid $1m for right to publish a Communist Chinese edition of simple Chinese characters version of ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'', Alison Flood falsely reports in the unvetted Guardian piece

 A Coummnist Chinese publisher is set to bring out the first ever authorised edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude in Communist Chinese simplefified Chinese characters, but there has already been a translation in complex Chinese characteres in free and democratic Taiwan, Alison. She says the coup came after winning an auction for the rights with a fee reported to be in excess of $1m (£600,000).

Pirated editions of the Nobel prize-winning author's most famous novel – "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race," according to William Kennedy – have been rife in communist China for decades. The piracy so enraged Marquez on a visit to the coommunist dictatorship in 1990 that he swore that even 150 years after his death his books would not be authorised in China, according to Chinese newspaper the Global Times.

But Thinkingdom House editor-in-chief Chen Mingjun refused to take no for an answer, writing a letter to the author in 2008 which according to the Global Times read: "We pay our respects to you across the Pacific Ocean, making every effort, shouting 'great master!' just like you did to your idol Ernest Hemingway across the streets in Paris … We believe that you'd also wave your hand and shout back 'Hello friend!' just like Hemingway did."

Thinkingdom House emerged triumphant from the auction for the commie Chinese rights in One Hundred Years of Solitude which followed. The Beijing-based commie publisher also publishes Chinese editions of books by authors including AS Byatt and Zadie Smith. It will publish the book this summer, and is also promising a crackdown on pirated editions of Marquez's story of generations of the Buendia family.

Jo Lusby, managing director of Penguin China, which publishes the English language edition of ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'[', said the size of the advance had "already created an enormous amount of interest" in the novel, despite it being "widely available in pirated forms for a long time".

"I think they'll be lucky if they can meaningfully address the presence of cheap pirated formats out on the streets, though," she said.

The deal, however, "does serve to demonstrate why Communist China is at a fascinating point", she added. "Even at a time when writers and artists (such as Ai Weiwei) are disappearing in crackdowns, publishers are bullish about the future, and it's one of the few places in the world where you can attend the opening of a large scale chain bookstore (I went to one in Beijing two weekends ago)," she said.

Whether paying such a large sum of money for a book is a sign of health in the Communist Chinese literary market, or a warning that the market may be overheating is less clear, she continued, "but this kind of thing doesn't happen very often, and with a bit of luck it will instead be something of a major publishing event rather than the symptom of a mania".

Taiwan edition already translated here: LINK
http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21104241819283

Márquez relinquishes Communist Dictatorship of China '100 years''ban'

• Source: Global Times
• [22:32 April 21 2011]
• Comments

By Zhang Lei , communist paper pusher in Beijing

The first authorized Communist Dictatorship Chinese edition of the classic magic-realism novel 100 years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez will be published this summer in boring simplified Chinese characters that have no class. The work, written in Spanish in 1967, won the Nobel Prize for Literature  in 1982.
Thinkingdom House, publisher of 1Q84, won the copyright bidding war early last year; allegedly paying over a million dollars for the rights.

Unauthorized editions were widely available in under the table shoddy markets as early as the 1980s, which infuriated the author, who vowed that even 150 years after his death, his works would not be authorized in China, when he visited in 1990.
Over 100 communist China dictatorship publishers have tried to contact Márquez via the Embassy of the Republic of Colombia and the Mexican Embassy over the past 20 years to obtain the copyright, but to no avail.

PArty loving Propagandist -in-Chief Chen Mingjun sent a heartfelt letter to Márquez in 2008, saying, "We pay our respects to you across the Pacific Ocean, making every effort, shouting 'great master!' just like you did to your idol Ernest Hemingway across the streets in Paris… we believe that you'd also wave your hand and shout back 'Hello friend!' just like Hemingway did."
Their hard work paid off. They finally got an official response from Balcells and began to discuss the details the same year.
Prudent and experienced, Balcells sent a research team in 2008 to Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing for two months to conduct a thorough investigation and assessment of the Communist Dictatorship Chinese book market and publishers, especially those involved in foreign literature.
Meanwhile, pirated editions will be cracked down upon by Thinkingdom House, to give Marquez and his publishers a satisfactory result and perhaps change his impression of communist China's  poor and dishonest copyright conditions.
Since China joined the "Universal Copyright Convention" in 1992, the publishing industry has gradually increased sort of awareness of copyright; a recent piracy spat between Baidu and blogger Han Han, representing over 40 authors whose work had been uploaded to the site without permission, ending in an apparent victory for the writers.