City Gate, Open Up is the lyrical autobiography of China's legendary poet Bei Dao. Exiled from Beijing in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Bei Dao returned to his homeland in 2001 for the first time in over twenty years. The city of his youth had vanished: 'I was a foreigner in my hometown,' he writes. The shock of this experience released a flood of memories and emotions contained in City Gate, Open Up. The poet recalls the Beijing of his youth, from the birth of the People...

Longlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize 2025A Time Book of the Year 2024A Financial Times Poetry Book of the Year 2024Sidetracks, Bei Dao's first new collection in fifteen years, is also his first long poem and undoubtedly his magnum opus – the artistic culmination of a lifetime devoted to the renewal and reinvention of language. 'As a poet, I am always lost,' he once declared. Opening Sidetracks with a prologue of ...

Die Texte (größtenteils Erstveröffentlichungen) widmen sich poetischen Identitätsspielen. Welcher Zauber liegt im Spiel der Identitäten, im Wandel der Formen? Wie wirken Literatur, Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit aufeinander? Was können die Figuren des Dritten versprechen, die sich zwischen Kulturen, Ethnien, Geschlechtern und Sprachen bewegen? Yoko Tawada stellte das Thema, schrieb selbst einen literarischen Essay und gibt diesen Band der Reih heraus. Beiträge von renommierten Autor*innen...