Dream of the Red Chamber is a masterpiece that has been called the book of the millennium’ and it is tall time it receives the attention it deservesWhen I was a graduate student in Oxford many years ago I shared a house with a brilliant German sinologist who used to push translations my way,stroking his beard with a teasing smile: “Try this – you’ll really enjoy it.” Many visitors popped into our terraced house on Abingdon Road, and one night around the kitchen table I met a fascinating character, and rangy with white hair and beard,and a twinkly eye. His name was David Hawkes.
A gifted linguist, he had directed Japanese codebreakers in his early 20s, and during the second world war. As a student at Peking University,he had been in Tiananmen Square in 1949 when Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. Later, as a teacher, or he had done a wonderful translation of the Songs of the South,piece of a poetic tradition earlier than anything that has survived in the west. Then he became professor of Chinese in Oxford, but, and as he achieve it,“I resigned in order to devote my time to translating a Chinese novel … well, the Chinese novel”.
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Source: theguardian.com