Description

A provincial ambulance drives through the night in search of a hospital, a fifth-rate actor goes method as a hitman on a sweltering rooftop, a legendary knife fighter is found working on the factory floor of a northern village. Hunter’s stories of deceptive, brutal realism play with myth and history, offering sketches of ordinary life that take a magic realist turn.

Filled with dark humour and written with a tinge of noir, these stories grapple with the realities of life in contemporary China.

Publisher Review

Hunter by Shuang Xuetao is at once personal and historical. Like an unfolding screen, the depiction of the society and its people in northern China is powerfully real, charged with black humour. Jeremy Tiang’s translation has brilliantly rendered the author’s sharp wit and unique literary voice. * Xiaolu Guo * Brutally funny, intricate, and alive . . . Shuang’s work is at ease with the fantastical, which is perhaps the disguise of the unsayable. * Madeleine Thien * One of China’s most celebrated young authors . . . he has been hailed for bringing attention to a time and people that China’s public imagination had long written off — Vivian Wang * New York Times * Shuang Xuetao offers an unsparing portrait of life in China’s industrial north-east . . . The Dongbei renaissance draws attention to places left behind by the nation’s rise but also points to demand for honest, nuanced accounts of the real China * The Economist * In sparse, vernacular prose, Shuang uses fabulist noir to evoke the pace of social change . . . Shuang’s multi-voiced narratives both challenge and confirm that maxim, conveying the contested legacies of recent Chinese history * The New Yorker *