Interview and signing session Zhang Yueran: ‘Swan Hotel’

On Saturday 20 September, Broese Booksellers is organising an interview and signing session with the Chinese author Zhang Yueran in collaboration with VNC and Prometheus Publishers. Zhang will be interviewed by FD journalist Jeroen Bos. Her novel ‘Cocoon’ was in many ‘Best Books of 2024’ lists and recently her novel ‘Swan Hotel’ was published in translation by Annelous Stiggelbout. If you want to attend this interview, sign up!

About the book:

Yu Ling is a nanny with a well-to-do family. With her boyfriend, she kidnaps the seven-year-old son, Kuankuan, with the aim of getting a ransom from the family and then running away. However, when Kuankuan’s father is arrested for corruption, Yu Ling realizes that she can forget about the ransom. But what should she do with Kuankuan now? Kuankuan himself is not aware of the seriousness of his situation: he has made friends with a goose.

‘Swan Hotel’ is a smoothly written, but above all very layered novel by Zhang Yueran, who made a big impression in the Netherlands with her previous novel, ‘Cocoon’. In ‘Swan Hotel’, Zhang writes about class differences, about the position of women in an apparently modernizing country and about loneliness in a big city. But above all, ‘Swan Hotel’ is a book that is as original as it is exciting.

About Cocoon:

‘Zhang Yueran has delivered a clever and penetrating novel in every way, in the treatment of the subject, the storylines, structure and writing style. All that together makes the novel a special book.’ NRC

‘In her atmospheric, dark novel, you can tell from everything that Zhang is not looking for simple explanations.’
de Volkskrant

‘Zhang Yueran’s sentences and images have an unreal sheen of both hard-won insights and eternal truths.’
Ian McEwan

Date: Saturday 20 September | Time: 16.00 – 17.00 hrs | Free admission

Doors open: 3.30 pm | Start interview: 16.00 hrs | End of interview: 4.45 pm | Signing afterwards.

If you want to attend this interview, registration is required via klantenservice@broese.nl

Zhang Yueran (1982) is one of the most influential Chinese writers of our time, whose work has invariably sold hundreds of thousands of copies. After a few novels and collections of short stories, The Nail is her international breakthrough. It was awarded the Prix Transfuge for the best Asian novel and was shortlisted for the Prix du meilleur roman étranger. In 2019 she was a guest writer in Leiden.