Nicholas Jose to launch John Minford’s translation of the I Ching
6pm Tuesday, 16 December 2014
Asia Bookroom, Unit 2, 1 – 3 Lawry Place, Macquarie, ACT
Professor John Minford is a world-renowned translator and Chinese scholar whose depth of knowledge and understanding of the I Ching is unrivalled. Professor John Minford’s translation of the I Ching will be launched by Professor Nicholas Jose at the Asia Bookroom, Canberra.
John Minford’s translation of the I Ching has been long awaited. It is dedicated to his revered teacher Professor Liu Ts’un-yan, formerly of the ANU. While Minford recognizes the importance of the massive Chinese commentary and scholarship that has grown up over two thousand years around this ancient Oracle and Book of Wisdom, he also firmly believes that it has much to offer the modern reader. He has striven to make it a helpful book, stressing the recurring themes of Self-Cultivation and Self-Knowledge. In the words of Anglo-Chinese novelist Timothy Mo, his new translation and commentary is ‘a kind of unholy resurrection, a cable that disappears into the abyss of a darker time. In it the Bronze Age predicts to the Information Age the shadow of what is to come.’
Professor John Minford has translated numerous works from the Chinese, including The Art of War, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio and the final two volumes of Cao Xuequin’s The Story of the Stone. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and the ANU, he has taught in China, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia. He is currently a professor at the ANU.
Professor Nicholas Jose will launch John Minford’s translation of the I Ching. Nicholas Jose has published seven novels, three collections of short stories, a memoir and essays, mostly on Australian and Asian culture. He was president of International PEN Sydney Centre (2002-05), general editor of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (2009), and Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University, 2009-10. He teaches Creative Writing at The University of Adelaide, where he is a member of the J M Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice.
For more information and registration details, visit the Asia Bookroom.