Dialogues in Paradise, Can Xue, translated from Chinese by Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang, 1989, China, SHORT STORIES
"At the heart of Can Xue's stories lies the domestic-fabulism carved out by, say, Kafka and Borges, where the intricate performance of movements within reality intermingles with the poetic depth of fantasy and surrealism ... as these eloquently poised and surgically raw stories become more fantastic and grotesque - where grandmothers turn into soap suds, and people become animals - the realm of the interior moves away from focusing on the philosophically malevolent subconscious within society, to the interior psychological disturbance of the tormented mind."
"At the heart of Can Xue's stories lies the domestic-fabulism carved out by, say, Kafka and Borges, where the intricate performance of movements within reality intermingles with the poetic depth of fantasy and surrealism ... as these eloquently poised and surgically raw stories become more fantastic and grotesque - where grandmothers turn into soap suds, and people become animals - the realm of the interior moves away from focusing on the philosophically malevolent subconscious within society, to the interior psychological disturbance of the tormented mind."
(James, review)