{"title":"Books by Can Xue","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781960385314","title":"Mother River","description":"\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eMother River\u003c\/i\u003e, 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. \u003cbr\u003eThrough her signature blend of the absurd and the profound, Can Xue explores the fragile boundaries betwen the known and unknown, between humanity and nature. In these tales, a man tries to chase down an ellusive golden peacock, a woman communicates with mysterious, shifting forms of light, and the river that runs through a small village seems to pulse with memories of its own.\u003cbr\u003eSurreal, provocative, and unique, \u003ci\u003eMother River\u003c\/i\u003e reinforces Can Xue's status as one of the most rewarding and complex writers working today--and a perennial favorite to win the Nobel Prize.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54911787237749,"sku":"9781960385314","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781960385314_6a0c0cb8-a083-41be-9334-08aa876b0b5d.jpg?v=1786030287"},{"product_id":"9780300153323","title":"The Last Lover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award for fiction, presented by Three Percent, a resource for international literature\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Can Xue's extraordinary book, we encounter a full assemblage of husbands, wives, and lovers. Entwined in complicated, often tortuous relationships, these characters step into each other's fantasies, carrying on conversations that are \"forever guessing games.\" Their journeys reveal the deepest realms of human desire, figured in Can Xue's vision of snakes and wasps, crows, cats, mice, earthquakes, and landslides. In dive bars and twisted city streets, on deserts and snowcapped mountains, the author creates an extreme world where every character \"is driving death away with a singular performance.\"\u003cbr\u003eWho is the last lover? The novel is bursting with vividly drawn characters. Among them are Joe, sales manager of a clothing company in an unnamed Western country, and his wife, Maria, who conducts mystical experiments with the household's cats and rosebushes. Joe's customer Reagan is having an affair with Ida, a worker at his rubber plantation, while clothing-store owner Vincent runs away from his wife in pursuit of a woman in black who disappears over and over again. By the novel's end, we have accompanied these characters on a long march, a naive, helpless, and forsaken search for love, because there are just some things that can't be stopped--or helped.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56232642740597,"sku":"9780300153323","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300153323_fe8d0db2-05f1-4151-bebc-70cfeca9411c.jpg?v=1786012668"},{"product_id":"9780300274035","title":"Barefoot Doctor – A Novel","description":"A profound, poignant story of a village healer and her community, from 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, [Can Xue] has a unique and powerful way of transporting readers to new worlds where reality and magic are intertwined, and she uses her own experiences to make this novel feel more personal.”—Emily Park, Booklist   In rural Yun Village, herbalist Mrs. Yi lives with her husband in a cottage at the foot of Niulan Mountain, where she gathers herbs to treat the ailments of the villagers by day and studies medicine by night. Sickness and herbs are lovers, she tells her patients, rejoicing when they recover, comforting them when they do not. All the while, she hopes to find a worthy successor to take up her mantle. As curious younger villagers observe Mrs. Yi and begin imitating her work—planting gardens and studying the art of healing—they soon discover that the line dividing life from death is porous, and the mountain is more mysterious than they ever knew.      Drawing on her experiences as a barefoot doctor in her youth, Can Xue returns with a transporting novel that alights in the in-between spaces: between the living and the dead, healer and sick, nature and us.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311683350901,"sku":"9780300274035","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300274035_47284025-a05b-4e3d-8556-c2030207a866.jpg?v=1786012778"},{"product_id":"9780300278262","title":"Love in the New Millennium","description":"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 flower beds and conspiracies abound. Some try to flee—whether to a mysterious gambling bordello, underground ancestral homes, or Nest County, where traditional medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self.      Can Xue’s mesmerizing storytelling traces love’s many guises—satirical, tragic, transient, lasting, nebulous, and fulfilling—against a kaleidoscopic backdrop of commerce and industry, fraud and exploitation, and sex and romance drawn from the East and the West.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311684170101,"sku":"9780300278262","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300278262_a9b98675-713b-4b53-adeb-b8cf0ad844e2.jpg?v=1786012855"},{"product_id":"9798989378074","title":"Kafka \u0026 I","description":"\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56420322115957,"sku":"9798989378074","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9798989378074.jpg?v=1786033396"},{"product_id":"five-spice-street","title":"Five Spice Street","description":"The first full-length novel by Chinese author Can Xue to appear in English   “There’s no other writer in China like Can Xue . . . strange, surreal, and very compelling . . . [and] this novel is probably the best place to start.”—Chad Post, Publishers Weekly  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 years old, others that she is 22. Some believe she has occult powers and has thereby enslaved the young men of the street; others think she is a clever trickster playing mind games with the common people. Who is Madam X? How has she brought the good people of Five Spice Street to their knees either in worship or in exasperation? The unknown narrator takes no sides in the endless interplay of visions, arguments, and opinions. The investigation rages, as the street becomes a Walpurgisnacht of speculations, fantasies, and prejudices. Madam X is a vehicle whereby the people bare their souls, through whom they reveal themselves even as they try to penetrate the mystery of her extraordinary powers.      Exploring the collective consciousness of this little street of ordinary people, Can Xue penetrates the deepest existential anxieties of the present day—whether in China or in the West—where the inevitable impermanence of identity struggles with the narrative within which identity must compose itself.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466603929973,"sku":"9780300167962","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300167962.jpg?v=1785654661"},{"product_id":"the-enchanting-lives-of-others","title":"The Enchanting Lives of Others","description":"A celebration of the beguiling power of literature, from one of the world’s greatest storytellersAt the Pigeon Book Club, a circle of readers gathers for exhilarating meetings to discuss literature. The only requirements for entry are an all-encompassing love of books and the intuition that to read is to love and to love is to read. Xiao Sang, a department store clerk, wonders if life can ever be as captivating as a novel. Newlyweds Fei and Han Ma struggle to build a marriage as Han Ma discovers a surprising gift for storytelling. Xiao Ma, a hopeful dreamer, explores the possibility of romance with an older man. Bound by a shared passion for fiction, each book club member seeks to understand the relationship between the stories they read and the lives they lead, reveling in both the quotidian details and the ecstasy of aesthetics.   This is the most accessible work yet from the celebrated writer Can Xue: a utopian comedy and a work of profound joy, a love song to literary inspiration and the remarkable beauty of the ordinary. The Enchanting Lives of Others explores what it means to know and be known to others through the transformative power of reading.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499407286645,"sku":"9780300311990","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-can-xue.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}