Asia Pacific Editor
Melbourne
China scholar, critic and novelist Pierre Ryckmans, pictured at home in Canberra in 2009. Source: News Limited
ONE of the world’s most eminent sinologists and literary figures, Pierre Ryckmans, has died in Canberra at the age of 78.
Ryckmans studied law at Louvain University in his native Belgium, then Chinese language, literature and art in Taiwan.
He worked in Hong Kong as a Belgian diplomat before settling in Australia in 1970, teaching Chinese literature at the Australian National University — where former prime minister Kevin Rudd was among his students — before serving as Professor of Chinese Studies at Sydney University from 1987-1993.
In The Chairman’s New Clothes, written in 1971, for which he first adopted the pen name Simon Leys, he exposed the true horrors of the Cultural Revolution at its midpoint — while many other sinologists were praising Mao Zedong.
His other works include Chinese Shadows, The Death of Napoleon — a novel in which he escapes St Helena and returns to France, and which was later filmed — a translation of The Analects of Confucius, The Wreck of The Batavia and a major collection of essays called The Hall of Uselessness.
Ryckmans delivered the Boyer lectures in 1996 on the theme Aspects of Culture. The lectures were published as The View from the Bridge.
Ryckmans was widely regarded as a brilliant writer in both French and English. He was an ardent Catholic and sailor.
He leaves a wife and four children.
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