This week, our editors at large report from a panel bringing together French and Chinese writers working on similar themes and explore prize-winning reporting on climate change. From the ethics of life writing to an upcoming literary festival featuring everyone from beloved authors to Bollywood stars, read on to find out more!
Hongyu Jasmine Zhu, Editor-at-Large, reporting from China
On the evening of October 23, the “Tandem 无独有偶” literary dialogue series hosted by Beijing’s French Cultural Center welcomed Édouard Louis and Hu Anyan 胡安焉—one from an impoverished French family, the other a veteran of 19 grassroots jobs in China. In a conversation moderated by Sarah Briand 白夏荷 of the French embassy, they explored a fundamental question: why do some feel compelled to write so urgently about their own pain?
Édouard Louis began by tracing his writing to childhood violence. “As a gay boy of ten or eleven, I was beaten and bullied at school. The moment a fist struck my face, I vowed to one day put it all on paper.” To him, writing is not a pastime but “redemption,” even an “antidote”—a way to distill a vaccine from the virus of experience. His autobiographical novel En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule—with Michael Lucey’s English translation The End of Eddy reviewed by former Editor-at-Large Madeline Jones—exposed his family’s poverty and violence, becoming a French sensation that also provoked fury at home: his brother once arrived from Paris with a baseball bat, threatening to kill him.
Louis noted that his mother later reproached him not for writing about abuse or sexuality, but for revealing their poverty. “Why say we were poor?” This painful truth—that the oppressed often feel shame for their own deprivation—lies at the heart of Louis’s literary mission: to give voice to those who, out of shame or lack of means, cannot speak for themselves.
Unlike Louis, who burst onto the scene at twenty-one, Hu Anyan only began writing at thirty. Before that, he’d worked as a guard, a clothing seller, a courier—moving through life’s repeated dead ends, feeling he had “accomplished nothing.” He explained that “in many jobs, you’re just a tool—a screwdriver, a hammer. Anyone could replace you. It’s hard to feel human.” Writing, for him, was a turn toward “a purer spiritual value,” a rebellion against conventional success. Among his limited options, writing had a low barrier to entry; anyone could start immediately.
He first aspired to fiction, reading widely from Balzac to Robbe-Grillet, yet remained unknown. Then in 2020, an essay about his 2017 night shifts sorting packages went viral online. Many wrote to him, “You’re another version of me in this world.” That spiritual resonance across distances—absent in his daily work—transformed his writing from a pursuit of self-worth into a medium to build understanding and offer courage, later becoming his autobiography 我在北京送快递 I Deliver Parcels in Beijing—translated into English by Jack Hargreaves and released by Astra House just this past week.
When the dialogue turned to ethics—should you seek permission to write about those close to you?—Louis’s stance was unequivocal: “Those who inflict violence on you forfeit the right to silence your story.” Hu, on the other hand, faced subtler dilemmas: even with pseudonyms, some recognized themselves and felt hurt. It’s a complex issue, he acknowledged, that he must continue to grapple with.
An audience member asked Hu what change his book might bring to delivery workers still in the shadows. His answer was plain: readers have told him they’ve now become more patient with delivery workers, pausing more to say “thank you.” “That’s a start. Understanding makes compassion possible.”
Looking ahead, Hu expressed that if his writing can help society grow more humane, he is willing to devote efforts to improving the conditions of workers like those he once was. “I feel I should take on some responsibility.” Louis, meanwhile, stated: “It would be a betrayal if I did not write books that make people shed tears.” He seeks to bear, through words, the sorrow and rage of his father, his mother, his brother who died at thirty-eight, and himself.
For writers like these, writing is a battle for survival. They take up the pen first to save themselves—and in doing so, let countless unseen lives step into the light.
Zohra Salih, Editor-at-Large, reporting on India
Dipesh Chakravarty’s essay “The Climate of History: Four Theses” (2009) opens with the observation that “the current planetary crisis of climate change or global warming elicits a variety of responses in individuals, groups, and governments, ranging from denial, disconnect, and indifference to a spirit of engagement and activism of varying kinds and degrees…these responses saturate our sense of the now.” We are at a certain ‘planetary juncture’, and our next steps are of critical import. “If, indeed, globalization and global warming are born of overlapping processes”, Chakravarthy asks, “the question is, how do we bring them together in our understanding of the world?”
This is the question that Indian-origin historian Sunil Amrith also takes up in The Burning Earth: A History (2024), an ambitious and sweeping global history that traces the intertwined trajectories of environmental transformation and empire over the past five centuries—from the early modern sugar plantations of the Atlantic to the coal mines, railways, and oil fields of the industrial age. If Chakrabarty posed a theoretical challenge, then Amrith’s work offers perhaps the most coherent historical response: a deeply researched narrative that reveals how human freedom, imperial expansion, and technological progress have been bound up with ecological devastation. Last month, he was awarded the £25,000 British Academy Book Prize for the book.
The Burning Earth was selected from a shortlist of six titles: The Baton and The Cross: Russia’s Church from Pagans to Putin by Lucy Ash; The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple; Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance by Bronwen Everill; Sick of It: The Global Fight for Women’s Health by Sophie Harman; and Sound Tracks: A Musical Detective Story by Graeme Lawson. The 2025 judging panel comprised Professor Shadreck Chirikure FBA, archaeological scientist; Professor Edward Hall, University of Oxford; former BBC foreign correspondent Bridget Kendall; Professor Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad FBA, distinguished scholar of comparative religion and philosophy at Lancaster University; and journalist and broadcaster Ritula Shah.
Closer to home, the 16th edition of the Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest, the city’s only international literary festival, will be taking place between November 7 to 9 at the iconic National Centre of Performing Arts (NCPA), Nariman Point. This year’s edition will feature over a hundred writers, speakers, and performers, including celebrated figures such as Jnanpith Award–winning Hindi poet and novelist Vinod Kumar Shukla; poet, translator and author Jerry Pinto; poet and musician Jeet Thayil; playwright and publisher of the bilingual journal Hakara, Ashutosh Potdar; journalist Faye D’Souza; filmmaker and writer Paromita Vohra; politician and author Shashi Tharoor; and former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud. The festival will also see participation from the city’s vibrant film and theatre community, with appearances by actors Jim Sarbh, Lilette Dubey, and Soha Ali Khan.
Of particular note is Palestinian actor and director Ahmed Tobasi’s acclaimed solo performance And Here I Am, created in collaboration with award-winning playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak and director Zoë Lafferty. The piece draws on Tobasi’s own life—his childhood in the Jenin Refugee Camp during the First Intifada, his imprisonment by the Israeli army for four years during the Second Intifada, and his later role as Artistic Director of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin. Other international voices joining the festival include Sri Lankan novelist and Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka; Malaysian-Australian author and artist Omar Musa; Taiwanese novelist Yang Shuang-zi; Nobel Laureate and author Venki Ramakrishnan; Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales; and historian Sam Dalrymple, co-founder of Project Dastaan.
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