Linda Jaivin
Linda Jaivin’s first novel, the comic-erotic Eat Me, was a bestseller in Australia for seven months and was published in a dozen countries; as Mange Moi, it became a bestseller in France as well. Kirkus Reviews wrote of Eat Me that ‘This tossed salad of erotic scenarios charms as few examples of its genre ever have.’ Glamour (USA) said it was ‘the sexiest thing to come out of Australia since Mel Gibson.’ Even the TLS reviewer confessed: ‘Some of the scenes described actually turned me on.’
Her second novel was Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space, described by the Washington Post as ‘witty and wickedly satiric… Few writers have skewered the rock and roll world so savagely and accurately and with so much delight’. The Melbourne Age called Linda Jaivin’s third novel, Miles Walker, You’re Dead ‘rapier sharp’ and the Bulletin said it was ‘a treat not to be missed.’ After that came the novella Dead Sexy, and then in 2006, the novel The Infernal Optimist, a dark comedy set in an immigration detention centre which the Sydney Morning Herald labelled ‘an Australian Catch-22’ and which was shortlisted for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 2007.
Linda Jaivin’s short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including, most recently, The Penguin Book of the Road (2008) and In Bed With, a collection of erotic tales by authors including Fay Weldon and Maggie Alderson, and also published by Penguin in 2008. Her plays, which have been produced in Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, Wollongong and Adelaide, include Halal el Mashakel and Seeking Djira.
She has also published two works of non-fiction – the collection of essays Confessions of an S&M Virgin and the China book The Monkey and the Dragon. Her essays on China and other subjects have appeared in both international and Australian publications including The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Rolling Stone (Australia), The Monthly (Australia) and her essays have been chosen a number of times for inclusion in the annual Best Australian Essays.
In 1992, Jaivin co-edited the acclaimed anthology of translations from the Chinese, New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices with Geremie Barmé. She has translated chapters of Sang Ye’s China Candid and done the subtitles for such landmark Chinese films as Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, Tian Zhuangzhuang’s Blue Kite, Zhang Yimou’s Hero and Chen Kaige’s upcoming (release date: 12 December 2008) Forever Enthralled.
Her latest novel, A Most Immoral Woman, is set in China and Japan in 1904 and based on the true story of an affair between the great Australian journalist George ‘Chinese’ Morrison and a free-loving American heiress called Mae Perkins. It was published by Fourth Estate (HarperCollins Australia) in March 2009; publisher Linda Funnell has written that ‘This is the book Linda Jaivin was born to write – sexy, witty and surprising, encompassing her passion for China and her talent for the erotic.’
Linda is currently working on a libretto in English and Chinese for an opera based on a story from a Ming Dynasty novel for which she was awarded a Breaking New Ground grant from the Australia Council. Linda is a visiting fellow in the Pacific and Asian History Division, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University and lives in Sydney. In this recent profile Link Text Linda explains her motivations.
Her forthcoming novels, The Empress Lover and The Education of Proofreader Ding are both contracted to Fourth Estate/HarperCollins Australia.
‘Jaivin’s writing shines and burns.’ (Sunday Age)