"The Running Flame" is the third work by Fang Fang that Berry has translated into English.
By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications
UCLA International Institute, April 24, 2026 — Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies Michael Berry and celebrated contemporary Chinese novelist Fang Fang (author of “Wuhan Diary”) and have together won the 2025 Baifang Schell Book Prize for Fiction as translator and author, respectively, of the English-language translation of Fang Fang’s novel, “The Running Flame.”
“I am especially happy for Fang Fang; one of the most courageous people I know,” said Berry, who is also professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies in the department of Asian languages and literatures at UCLA.
“She is a writer with an uncanny sensitivity, a gift for storytelling and an unwavering set of moral convictions. Working with her has been one of the greatest honors of my career,” he added. “I hope she sees this award as an affirmation that her words matter and we are listening.”
In an interview with Berry last year, Fang Fang described the predicament faced by Yingzhi, the protagonist of “The Running Flame,” as illuminating the larger challenges faced by rural women in contemporary China. “Women appear to have a home, but internally they may feel rootless. They may feel they have no place in the world at all. Their birth family has cast them out, and their new family does not fully accept them in the beginning,” she said.
“This creates a period of emotional limbo — a vacuum where they feel utterly empty inside. Yingzhi is one such woman caught in this state.”
Originally published in China in 2001, “The Running Flame” is one of only two novels by Fang Fang that have been translated into English to date. The other, “Soft Burial” (also translated by Berry) was originally published in China in 2016. Both novels were short-listed for the 2025 Baifang Schell Prize, along with only three other works of Sinophone fiction. Synopses of all five novels can be found on the short list.
Berry, a well-known scholar of Chinese culture and film, is a prolific translator of Sinophone fiction. He has translated three works by Fang Fang, the first of which was “Wuhan Diary.” Written by Fang Fang during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in China in 2020, Berry began translating the diary as the pandemic hit the United States and stay-at-home orders began to be instituted by numerous states and metropolitan jurisdictions.
The Baifang Schell Book Prize is an annual award conferred by China Books Review, a free digital magazine based at Asia Society in New York. It is named in honor of Liu Baifang Schell, who passed away in 2021 after spending her life working to advance U.S.-China relations.
The prize was launched in 2024 and celebrates exceptional book-length works on or from China and the Sinophone world that are published in English. It offers two $10,000 awards: one for nonfiction and one for fiction, with both author and translator awarded the latter. Although the prize is administered by China Books Review, annual winners are chosen by independent juries. An awards ceremony for the 2025 winners will be held on June 9 at Asia Society in New York.
Published: Friday, April 24, 2026
