Shan Sa

Shan Sa is also known as the author of The Girl Who Played Go, the novel she wrote in French. However, from a young age she has also been a painter and poet, learning calligraphy and traditional Chinese watercolour painting at seven, and publishing a book of poems at eight. In discussing her paintings, Shan Sa often personifies them, crafting hidden characters on her canvases. Her oil paintings’ surfaces hint at greater depth, like the telling details that novelists use to get a character ‘in’.