Author Biography
Simon Leys (1935-2014) was the pen name of Pierre Ryckmans, who was born in Belgium and settled in Australia in 1970. He taught Chinese literature at the Australian National University and was a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sydney from 1987 to 1993. Leys's writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Le Monde, Le Figaro Litteraire, and other periodicals. Among his books are The Hall of Uselessness (NYRB Classics), Chinese Shadows, Other People's Thoughts, and The Wreck of the Batavia & Prosper. In 1996 he delivered the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Boyer Lectures. His many awards include the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Femina, the Prix Guizot, and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction. Patricia Clancy is a translator of French literature. She has received several translation prizes, including the British Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction for her co-translation of The Death of Napoleon and the Scott Moncrieff Prize for French Translation for her 1999 translation of The Dark Room at Longwood by Jean-Paul Kauffman.
