Blue Light in the Sky and Other Stories »

Can Xue was born in 1953, in Changsha city, in Hunan province. Her parents were sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and she graduated only from elementary school. She learned English on her own and has written books on Borges, Shakespeare, and Dante. Earlier books by Can Xue published in the US include The Embroidered Shoes (Henry Holt, 1997), Old Floating Cloud (Northwestern, 1991), and Dialogues in Paradise (Northwestern, 1989). Her work has been translated worldwide. She lives in China. Translators Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping have collaborated on this excellent translation.

A selection of harsh, sometimes violent, and often surreal stories by the premier young avant-garde Chinese woman writer.

A couple moves with their young daughter to the seaside, only to be terrorized by hostile townsfolk, predatory seabirds, and the persistent sound of the waves. Two old friends spend their waning days traipsing amongst ruined walls, imagining bubbling brooks and lush marshland. An old man lives atop a bizarre wooden building in the clouds, where he is served pancakes by a hostile youth.

These are the scenarios of just some of the stories in this generous new collection by Can Xue. Although rooted in the folk traditions of Chinese literature and the real conflicts of contemporary Chinese life, Can Xue's stories exist in a separate space and time where dreams and reality coalesce: tenderness quickly turns to violence, strange diseases are caught, and quaint landscapes become phantasmagorical. Can Xue's literary world is inhabited by ghosts, dying old men, street urchins, cobblers, farmers, cats, rats, and stray dogs. Much influenced by Borges, Kafka, and Bruno Schulz, this new collection of Can Xue's surreal stories confirms The New York Times' assessment that "reading Can Xue's fiction is like running downhill in the dark; you've got momentum, but you don't know where you're headed."

Publishers Weekly

Can Xue (Dialogues in Paradise) is a Chinese writer in her 50s whose pen name means "dirty snow that refuses to melt." In this enigmatic collection, she writes in the artless prose of fairy tales and employs a curious dreamlike logic in her narratives. Characters witness grotesque illnesses, dodge natural catastrophes and endlessly wander through dark labyrinths of misunderstanding. In "Snake Island," a man revisits his hometown, looking for his uncle, only to discover that his uncle is dead, his own grave has been prepared and some villagers believe he is a ghost. It's seems clear that much of Can Xue's cruel, absurdist vision-where children, like the protagonist of the title story, are betrayed by their own parents and other family members-draws on her childhood during the Cultural Revolution. The narrator of "A Negligible Game on the Journey," says of fishing nets, "Only a random string is needed-the less related, the better," and it's a deft description of Can Xue's eccentric storytelling. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.