A Classic Tragedy: Short Stories

With her delightfully evocative prose, Xu Xiaobin presents us with a collection of stories crawling with fraught power dynamics, strange events, and unsettling images. Not only does she write about women, but the worlds around them, the fears that dog them, and the histories that haunt them.

Xu's entangled plots sneak up on the reader and make a lasting impression, from the blind singing sensation with a calculating mother, to the scornful aunt of an aging Miss Asia winner, to the young woman who becomes consumed by filth in the dilapidated house of her in-laws. Each of these mournful portraits of female life are tinged with the grotesque, and deliver an irresistibly sinister look into a China raging toward modernity while remaining constrained by an age-old violence towards its women.

Haunting, brave, and unapologetic, Xu Xiaobin's is an important voice in Chinese literature that commands the attention of its readers through its gripping story-telling and indomitable courage.

Xu Xiaobin is an influential and prolific Chinese female writer of fictions, proses and scripts. Born in Beijing, Xu started to publish literary works in 1981. Xu is noted for writings of searing emotional honesty about gender and sexuality, that push the boundaries of what is politically acceptable in today's China. Her works include magnum opus Feathered Serpent (1998 novel), Dream of Dunhuang (1994 novel), Princess Deling (2004 novel) and Pisces (1995 novella). A winner of a number of renowned literary awards, such as Lu Xun Literature Prize and China's National Literary Creative Writing Award, Xu's masterpieces have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Norwegian and other languages.

Natascha Bruce translates fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry from Chinese. Her work includes Lonely Face by Yeng Pway Ngon (shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize) and Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong (shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation). She is the recipient of a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for the translation of Owlish by Dorothy Tse.

Nicky Harman lives in the UK and is a full-time translator of Chinese literary works. She has won several awards, including the 2020 Special Book Award of China, the 2015 Mao Tai Cup People's Literature Chinese-English translation prize, and the 2013 China International Translation Contest, Chinese-to-English section. When not translating, she promotes contemporary Chinese fiction literary events through teaching, blogs, talks and her work on Paper-Republic.org.

Xu Xiaobin is an influential and prolific Chinese female writer of fictions, proses and scripts. Born in Beijing, Xu started to publish literary works in 1981. Xu is noted for writings of searing emotional honesty about gender and sexuality, that push the boundaries of what is politically acceptable in today's China. Her works include magnum opus Feathered Serpent (1998 novel), Dream of Dunhuang (1994 novel), Princess Deling (2004 novel) and Pisces (1995 novella). A winner of a number of renowned literary awards, such as Lu Xun Literature Prize and China's National Literary Creative Writing Award, Xu's masterpieces have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Norwegian and other languages.

Natascha Bruce translates fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry from Chinese. Her work includes Lonely Face by Yeng Pway Ngon (shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize) and Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong (shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation). She is the recipient of a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for the translation of Owlish by Dorothy Tse.

Nicky Harman lives in the UK and is a full-time translator of Chinese literary works. She has won several awards, including the 2020 Special Book Award of China, the 2015 Mao Tai Cup People's Literature Chinese-English translation prize, and the 2013 China International Translation Contest, Chinese-to-English section. When not translating, she promotes contemporary Chinese fiction literary events through teaching, blogs, talks and her work on Paper-Republic.org.