Can Xue

Winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award In Mother River, Can Xue, one of China's most daring and visionary writers, invites us into a surreal landscape where reality is as fluid as a river itself. This collection of thirteen stories weaves together vivid, dreamlike narratives that challenge our perceptions of time, identity, and existence. Through her signature blend of...

Barefoot Doctor is a profound, poignant story of a village healer and her community, crafted by one of the world’s great contemporary novelists. A complex and illuminating portrait of a group of healers in China . . . [that] offers profound insights about what it means to pursue and live a fulfilling life.” — Publishers Weekly A barefoot doctor herself,...

The first full-length novel by Chinese author Can Xue to appear in English Five Spice Street tells the story of a street in an unnamed city whose inhabitants speculate on the life of a mysterious Madam X. The novel interweaves their endless suppositions into a work that is at once political parable and surreal fantasia. Some think X is 50...

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. I Live in the Slums by Can Xue observes no obvious conventions of plot or characterisation. That is the only rule it follows. Instead, it tends to limn a disordered and poetic state, given...

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...

A celebration of the beguiling power of literature, from one of the world's greatest storytellers At the Pigeon Book Club, a circle of readers joins in exhilarating meetings to discuss literature. The only requirements for entry are an all-encompassing love of books and an intuition that to read is to love and to love is to read. Xiao Sang, a...