The Armchair Traveler's Club

[close] Can Xue was a finalist for the 2016 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She is from the Hunan Province. "Regarded as one of the most experimental writers in the world by some literary scholars and readers, Can Xue describes her works as “soul literature” or “life literature.” (Neustadt website). This novel was the winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book award.

Frontier opens with the story of Liujin, a young woman heading out on her own to create her own life in Pebble Town, a somewhat surreal place at the base of Snow Mountain where wolves roam the streets and certain enlightened individuals can see and enter a paradisiacal garden.

Exploring life in this city (or in the frontier) through the viewpoint of a dozen different characters, some simple, some profound, Can Xue's latest novel attempts to unify the grand opposites of life--barbarism and civilization, the spiritual and the material, the mundane and the sublime, beauty and death, Eastern and Western cultures.

[close] This novel is set in Henan Province and is based upon an actual scandal. Yan Lianke won the Franz Kafka prize in 2014 and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize twice. He is one of the most controversial authors in China.

Dream of Ding Village is a deeply moving and beautifully written account of a blood-selling ring in contemporary China. It is the result of three years of undercover work by Yan Lianke, who worked as an assistant to a well-known Beijing anthropologist in an effort to study a small village decimated by HIV/AIDS as a result of unregulated blood selling.

The story focuses on one family, destroyed when one son rises to the top of the Party pile as he exploits the situation, while another son is infected and dies. The result is a passionate and steely critique of the rate at which China is developing and what happens to those who get in the way.