3 of 3, short thread on #CanXue -- here's a text published in 2015 which provides some background on Can Xue's working practices, life experience, character and thinking, especially her ideas about what she calls 'performance'. If anyone has come across intersting texts by or about her, feel free to add them here. https://electricliterature.com/a-special-kind-of-performance-can-xue-on-the-course-of-a-chinese-writer/

particularly fascinating: the spatial qualities of the writing and thinking. Up, down, below, above, under beneath, flying. Can Xue reminds me of few writers (not Kafka, not really, depsite the use of animal positions/narrators -- though comparison wd be interesting). Her work does remind me of the peculiar kinds of imaginative drive and inventiveness found in the work of the artist Ilya Kabakov, who like her has a complex sense of the interaction of indvidualised fantasy & communal life #CanXue

Finally read some Can Xue, in Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping's excellent translation. She is a fairly prolific author, this book turned out to be the right place to start. It would be interesting to know more about the contexts of original publication and her reception in China -- some stories are designed as 'magazine writing' and the experimentalism is meeting a readership. Here's an extract from the title story. #ChineseLiterature #Bookstodon #CanXue #VendrediLecture https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2021/04/09/i-live-in-the-slums-an-extract/

Recensie van "Mystery Train" van Can Xue (vert Natascha Bruce). Man wordt wakker in een trein, in het pikkedonker, en probeert uit te vinden wat er gaande is. 'Geen traditionele mystery: er is geen zaak die moet worden opgelost, geen dader of misdaad die aan het licht moet worden gebracht. In plaats daarvan belichaamt dit boek mystery op een meer sinister, innerlijk niveau.'
#China #literatuur #lezen #boeken #CanXue #trein #mystery @chineseliterature
https://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/mystery-train-by-can-xue/

Mooie recensie van "Mystery Train" van Can Xue (vert Natascha Bruce). 'Het proza stuwt de lezer voort en de vreemdheid van het verhaal is, zoals in elke goede koortsdroom, dynamisch en origineel en onontkoombaar.' Can Xue wordt steeds genoemd voor de Nobelprijs voor de literatuur, maar is nog nauwelijks in het Nederlands vertaald.
#literatuur #China #CanXue #lezen #boeken
@chineseliterature
https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2023/02/06/mystery-train/

@ChrisCPS @bookstodon Honourable mentions for my top 7 of all time:

#MilanKundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
#AzareenVanDerVlietOloomi, Call Me Zebra
#DionneBrand, The Blue Clerk
#CanXue, Frontier
#Nabokov, Pale Fire
#Kafka, The Trial
#MarkZDanielewski, House of Leaves
#DavidFosterWallace, Infinite Jest
#PaulAnderson, Hunger's Brides
#NealStephenson, Anathem
#NeilGaiman, American Gods
#MaeveBinchy, Evening Class
#JackLondon, White Fang
#LucyMaudMontgomery, Anne of Green Gables series

@albinokid #dostoevsky #HarukiMarakami #kurtvonnegut #GabrielGarciaMarquez #LuXun #CanXue #KoboAbe #VirginiaWoolf