Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019

The most ambitious work of fiction by one of the world's greatest writers

"In this dreamlike novel . . . amid increasingly bizarre scenarios, appearances give way to hidden, otherworldly layers."--New Yorker

In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flower beds and conspiracies abound. Some try to flee--whether to a mysterious gambling bordello, underground ancestral homes, or Nest County, where traditional medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self.

Can Xue's mesmerizing storytelling traces love's many guises--satirical, tragic, transient, lasting, nebulous, and fulfilling--against a kaleidoscopic backdrop of commerce and industry, fraud and exploitation, and sex and romance drawn from the East and the West.

Author: Can Xue
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 11/20/2018
Series: Margellos World Republic of Letters
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.2lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.30w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780300224313


Award: 2019 Man Booker International Prize Nominee - Novel


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 11/01/2018 pg. 17

About the Author
Can Xue is the pseudonym of the Chinese writer Deng Xiaohua (b. 1953). Formerly a tailor, she began writing fiction in 1983. Her works include Barefoot Doctor, Five Spice Street, The Last Lover, and I Live in the Slums. Annelise Finegan Wasmoen is academic director and clinical associate professor of translation at NYU School of Professional Studies. Eileen Myles is a poet, novelist, and art journalist whose books include For Now, Chelsea Girls, and Evolution.