It is testament to the reach of Chinese fiction that the translated works of its living writers can be found on the shelves of bookshops within and well beyond mainland shores.
In the New Edition Bookshop, a popular bibliophile haunt in the port city of Fremantle in Western Australia, a translated copy of mainland-born Xiaolu Guo's voyage into the past, Village of Stone, sits near Xinran's migrant worker tale, Miss Chopsticks.
Closer to home, at the Beijing Bookworm cafe, a magnet for the capital's Anglophone readers, Mo Yan's Big Breasts and Wide Hips vies for attention alongside Jiang Rong's Man Asian Literary Prize-winning Wolf Totem.
By all appearances, the mainland's English-language book sector is already a modest success, but industry insiders say it's still a work in progress, awaiting a defining moment.
That's partly because, according to Penguin Group (China) general manager Jo Lusby, translated Chinese fiction has not yet had a 'category-breaking book', a breakthrough work that helps define a genre and pave the way for other books - in the way Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes paved the way for misery memoir, for example.
'You need a book that creates a new interest and new category of writing,' Lusby says. 'Chinese literature has not yet found its place; it doesn't yet occupy a place in the literary psyche. But it will do mainly because Chinese is an incredibly literary culture.'