AVAILABLE NOW: "Mother River" by Can Xue, Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping

New collection from a perennial Nobel Prize favorite

“Can Xue has found not just a new direction but a new dimension to move in, a realm where conscious beings experience space, time, and each other unbound from the old rules.”—Music & Literature

Can Xue has had an incredible career in English translations. She’s been published by Northwestern University Press, Henry Holt, New Directions, Yale University Press, Isolarii, Sublunary Editions, and Open Letter; she’s been praised by the likes of Robert Coover (“there’s a new world master among us”), John Darnielle (“Vertical Motion is incredible—short stories I’d call ‘surrealist,’ but it’s a clear-eyes surrealism, as if dreams had invaded the physical world”), and Susan Sontag (“if China has one possibility of a Nobel laureate, it is Can Xue”); she even won the 2015 Best Translated Book Award for The Last Lover, translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen.

And yet, despite having more than a dozen works appear in English translation—I think this one is the best.

The thirteen stories in this collection are vintage Can Xue. Similar to her novels (The Last Lover, Frontier) and other collections (Vertical Motion) the focus is less on what happens and more on the experience of reading.

"Mother River" is a short bildungsroman of a young man who decides to become a fisherman (and crafter of spherical maps) and discovers that performing the role itself is more important than the number of fish they catch.

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.

As with the other Can Xue volumes we’ve published—the novel Frontier, the short story collection Vertical Motion—this came to us by a combination of Can Xue’s recommendation (we first started publishing her when she wrote to me about a review of Five Spice Street that I wrote, insisting that I “understood Can Xue,” after which we met at the Reykjavik Literary Festival at which I interviewed her about the importance of experiencing her writing instead of searching for fixed meanings) and the urging of Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping. (Unfortunately, Chen Zeping is no longer with us to celebrate the release of this book.)

I’m willing to publish any and everything by Can Xue, sight unseen, but the stories in Mother River really hit home for me. The way in which reality shifts, things that seem on the level turn into strange metaphors for society and the human spirit, the playfulness, the humor—it’s all there.

Here’s what the Financial Times has to say about it:

In each successive story of Mother River, the latest collection of Chinese author Can Xue to be translated into English, it is as though the rules have once again been rewritten. Every expectation we have—about geography, chronology, human behaviour, even object permanence—is quickly undermined and our relationship with the writer reset. [. . .]

There is often, in Can Xue’s sense of time and place and quiet wonder, the simple beauty of a Studio Ghibli film. Purpose and eccentricity flourish in the face of apparently insurmountable obstacles, whether conventional or fantastic. Infrastructure such as trains and ferries takes on a curious power—to transport passengers not just physically but metaphysically. Strangers possess sudden wisdom, and children are frequently more insightful than those decades older than them.

The fascination early readers have had with this collection is echoed in the Erotic Review, which for their incredibly lush, full-color, stunning second issue, included Can Xue’s story, “The Goddess of Xishuangbanna.”

Excerpt from “The Goddess of Xishuangbanna”:

Zhao had recently seen the ear quite often; he had no idea if this was a good sign. It was a sexy and distinctly silhouetted ear, which usually wouldn’t attract him and yet it was also hard to figure it out. If it didn’t appear so frequently, Zhao wouldn’t feel so disgusted by it.

Zhao had come to Xishuangbanna three years earlier, and often lamented that the real estate was so hot that it kept multiplying. The flora and fauna resembled conjurers: they changed from day to day, and even from hour to hour. Zhao used to rent a bungalow. He hadn’t lived there long before he found that the place was full of red ants, snails, and caterpillars. No amount of insecticide helped. When he was eating, a tiny winged guy actually scuttled into his right ear and produced a noise like thunder. He couldn’t think of a way to get rid of it, so he ran into the kitchen and asked the cook for help. The cook rescued him by dropping some sesame oil into his ear. That night, Zhao dreamed of his ear.

Now the ear was suspended from the mosquito net. He got up during the night, turned on the light, and looked at it. He didn’t know if it was listening closely to the mosquitoes or if it was listening closely to his snoring. When Zhao tried to grab it, it disappeared at once. He went into the bathroom, where—to his surprise—a beautiful poisonous snake greeted him. Zhao did his best not to startle this guest, and went back to the bedroom. But he was too terrified to sleep. He kept thinking that the poisonous snake had slipped over to his quilt to keep him company.

The next night, he encountered the ear again. But this time, instead of just one, there were three. The three of them were exactly alike; maybe they were overlapping images. He looked at the ground again; it was covered with slugs. At midnight, the crickets outside and the frogs in the pond were calling mournfully, all unconcerned. Sighing, Zhao decided that the next day he would move to a multistory building in a complex across the way. He had planted some roses in front of his home. These flowers bloomed like crazy, and the suffocating fragrance spilled into his home. He had never seen rose bushes so lush with flowers; he didn’t know what strange variety they were. As he analyzed the surroundings, he suddenly felt that he was the target. These little living things were attacking him. If he were a little weaker, he would probably be done for. There was no breeze in the house, yet those three ears were swaying in unison, as if saying “You mustn’t irritate Xishuangbanna.”

The door wasn’t closed, and someone slipped in. It was Wenshan, who lived in the complex across the way.

“Zhao, I’ll help you move tomorrow.”

“Hey, how did you know that I’m moving tomorrow? I haven’t even made up my mind,” Zhao said.

“It didn’t take much thought. As soon as I came over here, I knew that you needed to move right away. The hot ground vapors are like a sauna.”

“Oh, so that’s it. Thank you. Let me ask: Did you live in a bungalow at first, too?”

“Yes. Bungalows aren’t good for us. The ground vapors in Xishuangbanna aren’t good for us outsiders.”

Wenshan walked around cautiously in the house, afraid of stepping on the slugs. Smiling, he said that he believed in Buddhism. “I can’t kill living things, so it’s challenging to live here.” He also told Zhao, “Living higher up is a whole lot better.”

He asked Zhao how long he had lived here; Zhao said three years.

“Three years is the turning point.” He nodded his head.

“Why?” Zhao was hoping he would divulge a little something.

“No reason. It’s always like this here. I’ve been here twenty-five years, and I still think of myself as an outsider.”

He tiptoed away. As soon as he left, the ears that had been hiding on the mosquito net reappeared. They looked like three tree ears—edible tree fungi.

The whole night was very calm. They probably knew that Zhao was going to move. Zhao felt it was a little odd: he was going to leave, and the little animals had no interest in the house. Was it he, then, that they were interested in?

FYI: In collaboration with the always excellent “Life on Books” podcast, we’re currently running a sale on our website for all our books—including Mother River. Use the code LIFE at checkout for 30% off. (Only valid for U.S. orders. We are still trying to find an option to ship to Canada and elsewhere at a reasonable cost for readers. Bear with us.)

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About the Artists:

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.

Karen Gernant is a professor emerita of Chinese history at Southern Oregon University.

Chen Zeping was professor emeritus of Chinese linguistics and a specialist in the Fuzhou Dialect, at Fujian Normal University.