With a generous selection of new translations commissioned for this book, readers will find the best short fiction, poetry, and essays from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in this first comprehensive collection of twentieth-century Chinese literature, which includes a lucid introduction by the editors and short biographies of the writers and poets.

Loud Sparrows is a spirited collection of ninety-one short-shorts written by Chinese authors over the past three decades. Presenting diverse voices and perspectives by writers both well known and new to the art, the stories are culled from newspapers, magazines, literary journals, and personal collections. Their subjects range from the mundane to the sublime and illuminate everything from humanist ideals to traditional virtues to the material benefits of a commercialized society. The anthology is organized into thematic categories such as Change, Creatures, (In)fidelities, Grooming, Governance, Nourishment, and Weirdness, and includes notes to better understand the genre. Each section is introduced by an original piece of flash fiction written by Howard Goldblatt.

The short-short, to borrow a Chinese saying, is "small as a sparrow but has all the vital organs" of a good story. Loud Sparrows offers a comprehensive introduction to a unique literary genre that has revolutionized world literature.

A tripped-out, sarcastic novel of urban alienation, Playing for Thrills follows the investigation of a mysterious murder of a possibly imaginary character that took place more than ten years before. The chief suspect is the narrator of the novel who may or may not have committed the crime--even he isn't sure.

As our charismatic antihero careens around Beijing drinking beer, having sex, and questioning a bunch of people who speak like characters in a gangster movie, he tries to find someone who can remind him which girl he was with and what he was doing at the time of the murder. Suddenly, the narrative explodes, and the reader is thrust into a countdown leading up to the crime itself. The result is a sometimes frightening, sometimes hilarious, always astonishing novel that is totally unlike anything ever published from China.