A Chinese “Bonnie and Clyde”, with a touch of SciFi.
The novella Ton temps hors d'atteinte offers to readers a surprising love story, considered over a long period of time, from childhood to adulthood. Written in an original way by a “me” (the narrator) addressing a “you” (the loved one), it tells the story of two beings as different from each other as they are from those around them, constantly playing on contrast and shift, concepts brilliantly embodied in the narration of the different times to which the two protagonists belong. Ending in a sort of tragic road trip like "Bonnie and Clyde", the novella unfolds patiently and subtly, according to the protagonist's different memories. The science fiction element of the novella only really reveals itself in the last part of the text, evoking other works by Xia Jia: a subtle, unspectacular innovation but which suggests the possibility of an inventive technology in the service of human rather than destructive and threatening. It is in this combination of romance and science fiction, both delicately brought together, that the success of the text is undoubtedly found. As Xia Jia herself mentions in her collection of short stories: “The most beautiful science fiction stories are not so different from the story of first love.”
Xia Jia was born in Xi'an in 1981. Nurtured in her childhood by the masterpieces of international (Asimov, Clarke, Dick) and Chinese science fiction (Ye Yonglie, Zheng Wenguang, Liu Cixin), she started writing as soon as he entered university. She completed a doctorate on the history of the science fiction genre in China in 2014. She now teaches at Xi'an Jiaotong University. Winner of numerous prizes, she is distinguished by her poetic writing, often melancholy and marked by a passion for the history of science.
Gwennaël Gaffric (born 1987) is a lecturer in Chinese studies at the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, where he teaches Chinese language and culture. He is the author of several articles in French, English and Chinese on Chinese-language literature (China, Hong Kong and Taiwan). His recent research focuses on contemporary science fiction in Chinese. He is also one of the leading translators from Chinese of general literature, science fiction, fantasy and the humanities (literary studies, philosophy). His translations include the best-selling volumes of Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem trilogy. He regularly translates for L'Asiathèque, where he heads the "Taiwan Fiction" collection. He has also published at L'asiathèque: La littérature à l'ère de l'anthropocène (2019).