THOMAS PODVIN’S FREELANCE WORK
Freelance writer - translator - Editor

Richard Meyer’s biography of Ruan Lingyu is the first text in English devoted to China’s most famous film-star of the silent era. By the time of her death in 1935 China’s ‘Greta Garbo’ had crammed a remarkable number of 29 films into just 24 years. Ruan specialized in portraying ill-fated characters, most notably The Goddess, in which she played a single mother who turns to prostitution to support her son. As Meyer points out, Ruan’s own life was far from savory. One married lover whittled away her money in gambling dens; another, a violent tea merchant, refused to marry her.
After her suicide in 1935, she became a symbol for women’s liberation and the denunciation of China’s feudal society. Meyer succeeds in painting a portrait of Ruan against the backdrop of the era in which she lived and worked. A good primer for anyone interested in this remarkable actress from a long lost era.
Hong-Kong University Press
Available at www.hkupress.org & www.amazon.com

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
November 2005 issue

Poet Ruth Padel’s remarkable travelogue blends prose with a personal diary, poems, lists and maps. It plays on so many angles that it’s sometimes hard to figure out whether it’s an awareness raising book or a tiger enthusiast’s private diary. Padel’s journey through 11 Asian countries begins in Kerala, India and takes in the forests of Siberia, the hermit Kingdom of Bhutan and the jungles of Sumatra. Central to her journey is her quest for tigers, an endangered species which has captured mankind’s imagination throughout the ages. Padel’s descriptions of her excursions in search of Panthera tigris are both captivating and educational. Not since Sandy Balfour’s Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose has an author so deftly weaved a personal memoir with a leitmotif (crosswords in Balfour’s case, tigers for Padel).
Time Warner Book Group UK

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
November 2005 issue