Frontier - Softcover

Xue, Can

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1940953545 ISBN 13: 9781940953540

Publisher: Open Letter, 2017

Synopsis

New Novel from the Winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award

Introduction by Porochista Khakpour.

"One of the most raved-about works of translated fiction this year"―Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire

Frontier opens with the story of Liujin, a young woman heading out on her own to create her own life in Pebble Town, a somewhat surreal place at the base of Snow Mountain where wolves roam the streets and certain enlightened individuals can see and enter a paradisiacal garden.

Exploring life in this city (or in the frontier) through the viewpoint of a dozen different characters, some simple, some profound, Can Xue's latest novel attempts to unify the grand opposites of life--barbarism and civilization, the spiritual and the material, the mundane and the sublime, beauty and death, Eastern and Western cultures.

A layered, multifaceted masterpiece from the 2015 winner of the Best Translated Book Award, Frontier exemplifies John Darnielle's statement that Can Xue's books read "as if dreams had invaded the physical world."

Can Xue is a pseudonym meaning "dirty snow, leftover snow." She learned English on her own and has written books on Borges, Shakespeare, and Dante. Her publications in English include The Embroidered Shoes, Five Spice Street, Vertical Motion, and The Last Lover, which won the 2015 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction.

Karen Gernant is a professor emerita of Chinese history at Southern Oregon University. She translates in collaboration with Chen Zeping.

Chen Zeping is a professor of Chinese linguistics at Fujian Teachers' University, and has collaborated with Karen Gernant on more than ten translations.

Porochista Khakpour is the author of two novels, Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion.

About this title

About the Author

Can Xue is a pseudonym meaning "dirty snow, leftover snow." She learned English on her own and has written books on Borges, Shakespeare, and Dante. Her publications in English include, The Embroidered Shoes, Five Spice Street, Vertical Motion, and The Last Lover, which won the 2015 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction.

Karen Gernant is a professor emerita of Chinese history at Southern Oregon University. She translates in collaboration with Chen Zeping.

Chen Zeping is a professor of Chinese linguistics at Fujian Teachers' University, and has collaborated with Karen Gernant on more than ten translations.

Porochista Khakpour is the author of two novels, Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion.

Review

". . . [Can Xue] is China's premier writer of the avant-garde, an experimental trickster. . ."―Porochista Khakpour

"There's a new world master among us, and her name is Can Xue."―Robert Coover

"If China has one possibility of a Nobel laureate, it is Can Xue."―Susan Sontag

"Odd, atmospheric, and enchanting: a story in which, disbelief duly suspended, one savors improbabilities along with haunting images and is left wanting more."―Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"At the sentence level, [Frontier] is a wonderful, carefully hewn thing, lucid and pure."―Amanda DeMarco, Los Angeles Review of Books

"This ambitious book aspires to refashion the Chinese language to explore interiority and subjectivity, establish transnational authorship, and enter the conversation of world literature."―Yun Ni, Harvard Review Online

Edition details

• Publisher: Open Letter
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1940953545
• ISBN 13: 9781940953540
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 470