Elsewhere: 'Wonderful writing' Sarah Hall

Product Information

For the first time in many years, I felt a tingling of contentment. I ate meat and drank water. I had a bed to sleep in. Before long, I would go to my bed and have a dream about butterflies, and, just like Zhuangzi, I would not be able to tell if it was me who dreamed about the butterflies or a butterfly who dreamed about me. The fifth, "Free Wandering", is about a young Chinese man arriving at what appears to be New York to meet his cousin. The man is overwhelmed by the enormity of the city, the chaos of its inhabitants, and the attitude of people towards him. As the story progresses, the man gets increasingly flustered, culminating in a surprising ending. A rather good description of what it means to be lost in a completely new setting, and what impact it might have on one's psyche. The more marginalised we are from the centre the less we are allowed to talk, write and think as ourselves… You're always seen, by others and by yourself, as a woman, a foreigner, an outsider, therefore the subordinate, the inferior and the inauthentic. We walked to the Little House. The buses hadn’t been running since the twelfth and there were no taxis. Small Bamboo had smoked three cigarettes by the time he finally remembered to offer me one. I told him I didn’t smoke.

Yan Ge applies her trademark stylistic prowess to bitesize stories, which follow protagonists as they navigate the sense of otherness with varying degrees of success. Pour a crisp glass of something and settle in for a ride, it’ll be time well spent." — Rolling Stone The community medical center,” Small Bamboo said. “Sister Du heard a new batch of volunteers arrived from Xi’an, so we called over.” I took the bottle, walked outside, and sat down at the table with Vertical, her boyfriend Chilly, and Six Times. A woman with a basket approached, wondering if any of us would be interested in purchasing her goods. She lifted up the lid, revealing the little turtles inside. They were luminous, as white as pearls.I marvel at Ge's ability to keep us transfixed in such a range of time periods, places and characters, all of whom are very much alone and in a blurred reality where the ground may be moving under them but they're leaning into the distorted reality. I love that while reading this book, a lot of the characters in the stories are writers and it feels like I am reading the stories from different writers and why they write under the different circumstances they are facing that can be as human or as ghostly or as ancient or as modern as they can be. I heard earlier on TV,” I said, “that the number of casualties is now sixty-two thousand, three hundred and fifty-seven.” Elsewhere” is Yan Ge’s debut novel written in English, showcasing her talent as a storyteller. The book takes readers on a journey through various time periods and locations, immersing them in a world that is both familiar and foreign. The stories in “Elsewhere” are jangly and eclectic, filled with dissonances and unexpected twists. I told Old Stone about my dream and he laughed for quite a while. “That is a very Zhuangzian dream,” he said.

My favourite short story was How I Fell in Love with the Well-Documented Life of Alex Whelan. It felt good to have at least one favourite story in this book. It is a story of a woman living in Ireland and being obsessed with a young man she met briefly before he died. I like the story that shows how we can curate one's image that develops due to social media. I felt exceptionally connected to the protagonist and understood why she acted like that. So I suppose the real question is—another Zhuangzian one—do you actually want to live or not★” He continued: “With my girlfriend, I realized she had given up when she lost her appetite. First she said she wasn’t hungry and then she just hated food, couldn’t stand looking at it, smelling it, or even hearing about it. One day we got up, I said, ‘What do you want to have for breakfast★’ and she screamed as if someone had stabbed her with a knife. That was when I knew she’d made up her mind.”When Yan Ge is not teasing with self-insertion, she recreates encounters between ancient Chinese intellectuals with a much more eerie and eccentric language to those who don’t read Chinese or know the context of traditional formal talk. Her translation is mostly literal, once again capturing the essence of Chinese hyperbole and metaphors without tweaking them for the comfort and convenience of English speaker readers. Yan Ge shows her range in this collection of historical reimaginations, surreal horrors, and modern-day obsession stories. You will find some bits of the book hard to read. Whether it’s the graphic description of gore and cruelty, or the matter-of-fact display of racially charged comments, you will wince. i have been so looking forward to this book since i read strange beasts, one of yan ge’s translated novels. and it did not disappoint.