Kingdom of Characters: A Tale of Language, Obsession, and Genius in Modern China

"The joy of being a judge on this prize is you learn a lot. These books are by writers who are at the top of their game, really world-class thinkers. This book was fascinating. It was the first thing I’ve read that began to enable me to understand the art of Chinese writing. They don’t have an alphabet with twenty-something letters, but thousands of symbols or characters. She tells a rather gripping story. The book gets completely fascinating on how you transmit those characters in the age of, first, the typewriter, and then the digital age. How do you get these Chinese characters onto the internet? At the heart of it are matters of power and authority and persuasion and propaganda and communication. Interestingly, it is a mark of leadership for a Chinese leader to have penmanship. If we saw Liz Truss’s handwriting, there’d just be a big yawn, but in China it’s a mark of a person’s qualities and capacities for leadership. It’s a riveting tale and an insight into Chinese culture, which I personally want more of as China takes a stronger place in the world. I want to understand what makes that community or communities tick. She also focuses on the individuals, which is another theme connecting these books. The ones that really resonate for me are those which take not ideas, but individuals and the role they’ve played in taking things forward. She really does that. She doesn’t just tell you how it happened, she tells you who did it and their story. Yes, right up to the present day. Technically it’s complex, how you take these characters and create a language which is capable of being transmitted and understood by other people. It’s a form of standardization, I suppose, but it’s really interesting. Part of our best books of 2022 series."