Pulitzer winner shares Trust with China readers

On his first trip to East Asia, award-winning author discusses 'truth' during literary appearances, Fang Aiqing reports.

Within Johann Sebastian Bach's polyphony — with its repetition, inversion and reversion — novelist Hernan Diaz found inspiration, penning Trust, in a book-within-a-book format, exploring family, wealth and ambition, that won him the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Since the recent publication of its Chinese version, Diaz, who was born in Argentina, raised in Sweden and currently lives in the United States, embarked on his first journey to China, a novel land for him. It was also his first trip to East Asia.

From May 11 to 17, the author was held to a tight schedule of public appearances and book signings in Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing, the provincial capital of East China's Jiangsu province, where he met Chinese counterparts, critics and a group of serious readers who are particularly curious about the male writer who cares for, studies and raises women's voices through storytelling.