I Live in the Slums

I Live in the SlumsLonglisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. A major new collection of stories by one of the most exciting and creative voices in contemporary Chinese literature. Can Xues stories observe no obvious conventions of plot or characterisation. That is the only rule they follow. Combining elements of both Chinese materiality, the love of physical things and Western abstract thinking, Can Xue invites her readers into an immersive landscape that

Longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.

A major new collection of stories by one of the most exciting and creative voices in contemporary Chinese literature.

Can Xue’s stories observe no obvious conventions of plot or characterisation. That is the only rule they follow. 
 
Combining elements of both Chinese materiality, the love of physical things and Western abstract thinking, Can Xue invites her readers into an immersive landscape that blends empirical fact and illusion, mixes the physical and spiritual, and probes the space between consciousness and oblivion.

She brings us to a place that is both readily familiar yet unmappable and can make us hyperaware of the inherent unreliability in our relationship to the world around us. Delightful, enchanting, and filled with secrets, Can Xue’s newest collection shines a light on the forces that give contours to the visible terrain we acknowledge as reality.