Xenophobic fear-mongering aside, he might have found an unwitting ally in Fang Fang, a 65-year-old Chinese novelist who lives in the city of Wuhan. Fang Fang, author of “Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City.” (HarperVia)It remains to be seen if many in the United States will buy “Wuhan Diary.” It’s available only as an ebook, for $20, and could feel to exhausted Americans like old, distant news. Less of a focus in the press was the fact that Astra is the subsidiary of an ambitious, publicly listed book publishing giant based in Beijing. AdvertisementAround 2014, Beijing-based Mediatime Books published under the CN Times Books imprint, and they were definitely not independent. Fang Fang and her translator now know that well.

Source: Los Angeles Times May 27, 2020 14:02 UTC