Eastern Literary Traditions: Chinese and Indian Fiction | Collection Development

China and India, the two most populous countries in the world, share a border, have growing economies in common, and each has a centuries-old literary tradition of its own. Similarly, both countries have robust publishing industries, but despite a tremendous number of books published and sold annually, relatively few of those titles make it to the American market. In 2012, in what Paper Republic, a resource about Chinese literature in translation, called “a good year,” about 20 titles were translated, and the majority of those were not published in the United States. Indian fiction, especially that written in English, fares slightly better.