Fang Fang’s ‘The Running Flame’ Wins Baifang Schell Book Prize

_{The Running Flame by Fang Fang (Columbia University Press), winner of the 2025 Baifang Schell Book Prize for Literature.}

The Weatherhead Books on Asia series enjoyed a moment in the spotlight earlier this month when The Running Flame, a novel by the contemporary Chinese writer Fang Fang, won the second annual Baifang Schell Book Prize from the China Books Review in the “Outstanding Literature from or on China or the Sinophone World” category. 

Among English-language readers, Fang Fang (b. 1955) is perhaps best-known as the author of Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City (2021), the first-person nonfiction account of life during COVID-19 lockdown that won her official censure at home and widespread acclaim in the rest of the world. The Running Flame, first published in 2001, is the story of a rural woman whose struggle against patriarchal authority pushes her toward desperate extremes. In 2025 Columbia University Press published it in the Weatherhead Books on Asia series alongside her 2016 novel Soft Burial. Veteran translator Michael Berry, who was also responsible for the English-language edition of Wuhan Diary, translated both books.

The Weatherhead Books on Asia series was launched in 2001 as a platform for quality translations of literature and works on culture from across Asia. Previous Chinese-language authors in the series include Dung Kai-cheung, Qian Zhongshu, and Wang Anyi. 

A project of the China Books Review, the Baifang Schell Book Prize awards $10,000 to “exceptional books on or from China and the greater Sinophone world” in nonfiction and translated literature. A jury consisting of Eric Abrahamsen, Jiayang Fan, R. F. Kuang, and Megan Walsh read more than 30 works of fiction published in 2025 before settling on The Running Flame. Juror Jiayang Fan (a staff writer at The New Yorker) wrote of the novel, “Fang Fang’s prose moves with the velocity of a thriller and the weight of a throbbing heart, illuminating how entrenched patriarchy and stagnant social order conspire to foreclose women’s lives long before any act of violence occurs.”

At the June 9 awards ceremony at Asia Society New York, Berry and a close friend of the author who is based in the US accepted the award for Fang Fang, who was unfortunately unable to attend in person. In the same ceremony, Barbara Demick accepted the nonfiction award for Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins (2025), her intensively researched account of twin sisters separated by the PRC’s one-child policy.

_{China Books Review editor Alec Ash presents translator Michael Berry with the award for translated literature at Asia Society New York on June 9, 2026. (Song Chao)}

Reached for comment after the awards ceremony, Berry said, “It was a great honor to have The Running Flame recognized by the jury of the Baifang Schell Prize. I was especially happy for Fang Fang, who has been tirelessly creating so many fascinating literary worlds for nearly five decades. She has faced various challenges for daring to document different forms of trauma — in the case of The Running Flame her target is domestic abuse — and speaking truth to power, yet she continues to soldier on.

“It was also quite moving to see that a novel originally published in China a quarter century ago still has the power to connect and resonate with a new generation of readers through translation.” 

Translator of numerous works of Chinese literature, Berry (the Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies) is also a widely acknowledged authority on Chinese cinema. That he is far from content to rest on his laurels is clear from what he told us about his upcoming projects.  

“The next books to come out will be two long-form interview books with two Sinophone filmmakers — Boiling the Sea: Hou Hsiao-hsien on Hou Hsiao-hsien, which is set to be published in the Spring of 2027 by University of California Press, and Ann Hui on Ann Hui, forthcoming from the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. 

“I also have another literary translation project currently under review with Columbia University Press; and a long-delayed project with Columbia on the relationship between Hollywood and the Chinese film industry, which I hope to wrap up soon.”

We congratulate Fang Fang, Michael Berry, and our friends at Columbia University Press on this richly deserved honor.  

_{The 2025 Baifang Schell Book Awards (Baifang Schell pictured, rear left). (Song Chao)}