An excerpt from Can Xue’s Love in the New Millennium, expertly translated by the Academic Director of the MS in Translation, Annelise Finegan Wasmoen, has been published in the Harper’s Magazine November issue. Can Xue’s novel has been hailed as “the most ambitious work of fiction by a writer widely considered the most important novelist working in China today.” The excerpt, entitled “Train Dreams,” gives readers an enticing glimpse at the novel in anticipation of its full release by Yale University Press on November 20th.
Check it out here: https://harpers.org/archive/2018/11/love-in-the-new-millennium-can-xue/
In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flowerbeds and false reports fly. Conspiracies abound in a community that normalizes paranoia and suspicion. Some try to flee—whether to a mysterious gambling bordello or to ancestral homes that can only be reached underground through muddy caves, sewers, and tunnels. Others seek out the refuge of Nest County, where traditional Chinese herbal medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self. Each life is circumscribed by buried secrets and transcendent delusions.
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Congrats Annelise! This novel sounds fantastic!