asianamlitfans | A Review of Death Notice

Death Notice by Zhou Haohui, Beijing: Beijing Times Chinese Press, 2014
Translated by Zac Haluza, New York: Doubleday, 2018

Death Notice is translated from the first book of a trilogy written by Zhou Haohui—one of the top suspense writers in China. Zac Haluza did a decent job translating the fiction, cutting out redundant depictions of the characters’ thoughts unrelated to the plot development and the various repetitions, correcting small contradictions, and smoothing out obviously illogical places. With the help of the translation, Death Notice is, overall, a page-turner that you would want to read in one setting.

A police officer was killed in his apartment. Its investigation leads to solved and unresolved cases 18 years ago. At the same time, the killer Eumenides—named after the Greek deity of vengeance and the self-imposed fair judge and ruthless executioner who works beyond the corrupted legal system—stirs the police force and the whole city by sending out death notices indicating next targets, their crimes, and dates of executions. To find out and impedes Eumenides and to confront the bold defiance, the 4/18 Task Force is formed, consisting of top police officers from local police offices and a psychologist from the local police academy. With their involvement in the investigation, their personal pasts are haunting, revealing, and complicating…Thanks to the translator, the psychologist—one of a few women in the fiction—fits her role as a smart and independent psychologist and lecturer from the local police academy instead of being a pretty young lady, who is unprofessional and concerns more about how men around her feel rather than her investigation in the original text.

The novel is centered on questions of should justice be upheld by individuals that investigate crimes and execute criminals circumventing the law? Should polices protect those who have received death notices as any other innocent victims or use them as baits to capture Eumenides? The questions are great. The plot is intriguing. Yet the original motive of the birth of Eumenides and some of the convictions being made are unconvincing. Moreover, in the process of revenge, Eumenides is unhesitating to hurt his friend and kill acquaintance and innocent people, which undermines the originally serious questions that the author poses when readers could possibly read Eumenides as an insane character.

The original Chinese novel is set in “A city.” In its translation, Haluza sets it in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, China. “A city” sends out the message that the crimes, the corruption, the social and justice problems could actually happen in any big cities even around the world, transcending cultural differences. Whereas setting it in Chengdu gives the fiction a special Chinese flavor which may attract Western readers who are curious about Chinese culture and society. However, since there is few portrayal of “A city” in the original text, the sporadic places depicting Chengdu and Sichuan food are created solely by the translator and are restrained.

An interesting change in the translation is the name of the protagonist—one of the main police officers. His name is “Luo Fei” in the original text. He is an extraordinary detective and the main character in many of Zhou Haohui’s works. However, in the English translation, his name changes to “Pei Tao,” which comes out of nowhere. Not sure whether it is because he is also the main guy in Zhou’s first English translation novel The Valley of Terror, which “did not take off” according to a New York Times article.

The other minor problem is Chinese names. They might be so confusing to the Western audience as it confused even the translator. For a couple of places, Haluza confused “Meng” with “Mu.” Other names in this volume that might be confusing and interrupt reading include “Zeng” and “Zheng,” “Zhou” and “Zou,” and “Peng” and “Pei.”

www.amazon.com/Death-Notice-Novel-Zhou-Haohui/dp/0385543328/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0