Simon Leys is the pen name of the literary critic, essayist, historical novelist, and eminent sinologist Pierre Ryckmans. Born in Belgium in 1935, he settled in Australia in 1970 and was a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sydney from 1987 to 1993. His works include Chinese Shadows (1977), The Death of Napoleon (1991), a new translation of the Analects of Confucius (1997), and The Angel and the Octopus (1999). A fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and a member of the Académie Royale de Littérature Française (Belgium), he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino del Duca in 2004.
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Postscript
February 9, 2012
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He Told the Truth About China’s Tyranny
February 9, 2012
No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems
by Liu Xiaobo, edited by Perry Link, Tienchi Martin-Liao, and Liu Xia, and with a foreword by Václav Havel
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Orwell & the Anarchists
September 29, 2011
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The Intimate Orwell
May 26, 2011
Diaries by George Orwell, edited by Peter Davison
George Orwell: A Life in Letters
selected and annotated by Peter Davison
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‘Ravished by Oranges’
December 20, 2007
Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man
by Jonathan D. Spence
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Giant
December 17, 1998
Victor Hugo: A Biography
by Graham Robb
Shadows of a Hand: The Drawings of Victor Hugo
by Ann Philbin, by Florian Rodari
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Dostoevsky & ‘Don Quixote’
November 19, 1998
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The Imitation of Our Lord Don Quixote
June 11, 1998
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The Archaeological Me
March 26, 1998
The Factory of Facts by Luc Sante
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Mythmaker
May 29, 1997
André Malraux: A Biography by Curtis Cate
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On Mother Teresa
January 9, 1997
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The Calligraphic Spirit
June 20, 1996
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One More Art
April 18, 1996
The Chinese Art of Writing by Jean François Billeter
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Balzac’s Genius & Other Paradoxes
January 12, 1995
Balzac: A Life by Graham Robb
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Lawrence of Australia
April 21, 1994
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The Art of Interpreting Nonexistent Inscriptions Written in Invisible Ink on a Blank Page
October 11, 1990
The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921–1985: A Self Portrait by Laszlo Ladany, foreword by Robert Elegant
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Changing Communism
January 18, 1990
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After the Massacres
October 12, 1989
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The Curse of the Man Who Could See the Little Fish at the Bottom of the Ocean
July 20, 1989
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Chinese Shadows
September 15, 1977
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Chinese Shadows: Bureaucracy, Happiness, History
June 9, 1977
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Chinese Shadows
May 26, 1977