The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Mother River, Can Xue

Mother River

Can Xue

Critic Reviews

Good

Based on 3 reviews on

BookMarks logo
Winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award
In Mother River, 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.
Through 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.
Surreal, provocative, and unique, Mother River 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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Open Letter
  • Publish Date: Jan 21st, 2025
  • Pages: 256
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.40in - 0.70in - 0.75lb
  • EAN: 9781960385314
  • Categories: LiteraryWorld Literature - China - GeneralShort Stories (single author)

More books to explore

Book Cover for: Rouge Street, Shuang Xuetao
Book Cover for: Stick Out Your Tongue: Stories, Ma Jian
Book Cover for: Owlish, Dorothy Tse
Book Cover for: Slow Boat to China and Other Stories, Kim Chew Ng
Book Cover for: The Taste of Apples, Huang Huang Chun-Ming
Book Cover for: Gunga Din Highway, Frank Chin
Book Cover for: Two Dreams: New and Selected Stories, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim
Book Cover for: What the Zhang Boys Know, Clifford Garstang
Book Cover for: Access, Xu XI
Book Cover for: A Cat, a Man, and Two Women, Junichiro Tanizaki
Book Cover for: Seven Japanese Tales, Junichiro Tanizaki
Book Cover for: The Refugees, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book Cover for: Boundless Deep, and Other Stories, Gen del Raye
Book Cover for: Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories, Oksana Zabuzhko
Book Cover for: Golden Gate: And Other Stories, Clarence Major

About the Author

Xue, Can: - Can Xue is the pseudonym of celebrated experimental writer Deng Xiaohua, born in 1953 in the city of Changsha. She is the author of Vertical Motion, Frontier, Barefoot Doctor, and Five Spice Street, among other books.
Gernant, Karen: - Karen Gernant is a professor emerita of Chinese history.
Zeping, Chen: - Chen Zeping was a professor emeritus of Chinese linguistics.

More books by Can Xue

Book Cover for: Love in the New Millennium, Can Xue
Book Cover for: Frontier, Can Xue
Book Cover for: Vertical Motion, Can Xue
Book Cover for: The Last Lover, Can Xue
Book Cover for: Barefoot Doctor, Can Xue
Book Cover for: Five Spice Street, Can Xue
Book Cover for: I Live in the Slums: Stories, Can Xue
Book Cover for: Blue Light in the Sky & Other Stories, Zeping Chen
Book Cover for: The White Review No.30, Can Xue

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

"There's a new world master among us and her name is Can Xue."--Robert Coover
"If China has one possibility of a Nobel laureate it is Can Xue."--Susan Sontag
"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
"Can Xue is a master at twisting philosophical ideas into realities that seem simple but are incredibly thoughtful and intricate."--Emily Park, Booklist
"There's no other writer in China like Can Xue."--Chad Post, Publishers Weekly