I Live in the Slums

“Sixteen dreamlike stories, translated from the Chinese, merge the physical and the philosophical.”—New York Times Book Review

“There’s something inescapably cosmic about [Can Xue’s] writing: the grandness of her vision, the abstraction of her thought, the way the details of lived reality seem to shrink and assume an equal significance, as though one were orbiting a distant star and peering down.”—Bailey Trela, Los Angeles Review of Books

“[An] eerie, unpredictable, cracked and crazy world. . . . Sheer reading pleasure for sophisticated readers and a worthy starting point for initiates.”—Library Journal

“[An] exquisite collection. . . . Can Xue is a master at twisting philosophical ideas into realities that seem simple but are incredibly thoughtful and intricate. These sixteen poetic stories have astonishing depth that will transfix readers.”—Emily Park, Booklist

“Can Xue is like the Lady Gaga of modern Chinese literature. Both are enthroned sphinxes of world culture today. . . . [Can Xue’s] work is often outlandish and macabre, eschewing narrative conventions of linearity; it can be comical, but also somber. . . . Her latest short fiction collection, I Live in the Slums, fully lives up to that colorful reputation.”—Victoria Zhuang, Harvard Review

“Wade into the often unsettlingly beautiful universe Can Xue has created until you are swimming in it, your head beneath the water.”—Julie Cadman, Michigan Quarterly Review

Longlisted for the 2021 National Translation Award in Prose, sponsored by the American Literary Translators Association

“If China has one possibility of a Nobel laureate it is Can Xue.”—Susan Sontag