Rebecca Kuang Interviewed by Angus Phillips

Chinese-American fantasy writer Rebecca Kuang talks about her bestselling Poppy Wars series of novels and the forthcoming publication of her latest novel Babel.

Kuang grew up in Dallas, Texas, after emigrating from China with her family at the age of four, and has studied in the US and the UK. She was only 19 when she began writing The Poppy War and only 22 when it was published. The plot is based around the second Sino-Japanese war of the mid-20th century. The novel was the first in a trilogy that includes The Dragon Republic and The Burning God. Her fourth novel, Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution is set in 1830s England and her fifth, due out in May, is Yellowface, about a white author who steals a manuscript by a successful Asian-American novelist who dies in a freak accident.

The Poppy War won the 2019 Compton Crook Award for best first English language novel of the year and the 2019 Crawford Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. Kuang has a Master of Philosophy in Chinese Studies from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford. Here she talks to Professor Angus Phillips, director of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing at Oxford Brookes University.

The event is presented by the Confucius Institute and the Oxford International Centre for Publishing at Oxford Brookes University. Previous Confucius Institute events at the festival were Man Asian Literary Prize Winner Su Tong (2018) and novelist, essayist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo (2022).