I Live in the Slums, by Can Xue

Staff Pick

Can Xue’s first story collection in over a decade is a frenetic adventure through China’s slums. These sixteen pieces show the gritty reality of urban life, taking readers through sewers, behind concrete walls, and inside claustrophobic rooms. At the same time, with their varied and unreliable narrators, these narratives seem to unfold somewhere between the physical world and the fantastic world--charting dizzying liminal spaces where the only constants are incessant change and uncertainty. Despite this fundamental disorientation, Can Xue’s stories are threaded by questions of human nature, and what it means to share space with other forms of life. I Live in the Slums is not for everyone, but those that do decide to venture into Can Xue’s world will certainly be mesmerized. 

I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) By Can Xue, Karen Gernant (Translated by), Zeping Chen (Translated by) Cover Image
By Can Xue, Karen Gernant (Translated by), Zeping Chen (Translated by)
$26.00
ISBN: 9780300247435
Availability: Not On Our Shelves—Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Yale University Press - May 19th, 2020