Deals help unfold Shanghai saga

Jin Yucheng's sweeping novel detailing the complexities of city life, Blossoms, is being translated into several languages, including English, Fang Aiqing reports.

New translations of Shanghai writer Jin Yucheng's work Fan Hua (Blossoms), which "could almost be called a Shanghai encyclopedia" as the translator of the English version John Balcom once put it, are set to offer more overseas readers a taste of Shanghai.

The work has been signed up for an English translation deal with the US book company Farrar, Straus and Giroux last December, a Japanese version with Hayakawa Publishing Corp and a French one with Gallimard in January. A deal for a Vietnamese translation was confirmed in 2016, while two Spanish publishers are also bidding for the work, according to Peng Lun, Jin's foreign rights agent.