"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