Seriously, what’s the ETA of the scandalous revelations on this one?

According to the Observer there’s an 11-year-old girl in China called Nancy Yi Fan who’s gotten herself published by one of the big guns. The story goes that she just up and emailed her manuscript to Jane Friedman, the CEO of HarperCollins, and Friedman (that incredible talent scout and kind, tweedy publisher at heart as well as hardened businesswoman) was so bowled over by the sheer literary merits of the ms that she could not rest until she had somehow and against all odds managed to persuade her peons to pick it up.

Astonishing. *wipes tear from eye*

A fantasy novel about tribes of warring birds, written by a gifted 11-year-old girl who lives in the southern-most province of China, is to be published worldwide in English.

The young author, Nancy Yi Fan, won the extraordinary opportunity by simply emailing her manuscript to the chief executive of HarperCollins, Jane Friedman, at the publisher’s New York office.

Fan has since been hailed as a prodigy by her editors who will use her book in a new attempt to establish the firm in China . Her story, Swordbird, is an epic allegory about the struggle for peace and will be printed in this country in the new year. Those who have seen it talk about it as the product of a mind as imaginative as some of the greatest names in children’s writing.

Fan wrote the novel in response to learning of the war on terror, and it is described as ‘an action-packed tale of birds at war’, set in the once-peaceful Stone-Run Forest. It tells how local woodbird tribes, the Cardinals and the Blue Jays, find themselves pitted against each other in a search for precious food supplies – some of which have mysteriously gone missing. Fighting breaks out and an evil hawk, Turnatt, turns the tribes against each other as part of a plan to take over the forest. He enslaves captives from surrounding tribes and is forced to build an impregnable fortress in which to confine all the woodbirds.

Born in Beijing in 1993, Fan lived in New York with her parents from the age of seven, graduating ‘with excellence’ from an elementary school there in 2004. When she was in sixth grade, at the age of 11, she was taught about terrorism and the events of 9/11. That night, she explains, she had a startling dream all about birds at war and the next day she started writing Swordbird in her bedroom as a way of trying to convey her worries about violence in the world. She now lives back in China, on the beautiful Hainan Island with her parents and their three pet birds. The girl, now 13, is a compulsive writer and reader who spends most of her time in the library, but she also loves bird-watching and martial arts.

The hero of Swordbird is an escaped ‘slavebird’, Miltin, who leads the woodbirds once they learn of Turnatt‘s strategy. The title refers to a legendarily heroic bird of peace. The Swordbird is the only one who can save the forest, so young birds Aska and Miltin fly off on a dangerous mission to find the Leasone gem. This stone, paired with an ancient song from the ‘Old Scripture’, will conjure Swordbird‘s help. The story has been chosen to launch the publishing house’s new push into China.

Quel suprise. New push into China? Why, what an amazing coincidence. As is the fact that the names in the book aren’t Chinese, nor even easy for Chinese to pronounce, nor are cardinals and blue jays native to China (nor Manhatten, come to that; they need woods). Nor does anyone graduate from an American elementary school, with excellence or without, in four years. Seriously, people, is there a seedy, unheated warehouse in Fulan or Maine stuffed with Old Oxbridgers, furiously churning out what the People’s Republic hopes will be the next Harry Potter?