Description
About Yan Ge
Yan Ge was born in Sichuan, China in 1984. She is a fiction writer in both Chinese and English. Her first short story collection was published in China when she was seventeen. She is the author of thirteen books, including six novels. She has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Maodun Literature Prize (Best Young Writer). She was named by People’s Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China. Her work has been translated into English, French and German, among other languages. The English translation of her novel The Chilli Bean Paste Clan was published in 2018. Her novel Strange Beasts of China was published in 2020. Yan Ge started to write in English in 2016. Since then, her writing has been published in the New York Times, The Stinging Fly, the Irish Times, TLS, Stand Magazine, Brick and Being Various: New Irish Short Stories. She was the recipient of the UEA International Award 2018/19. Her debut English-language story collection Elsewhere will be published by Faber (UK) and Scribner (US) in 2023. She lives in Norwich with her husband and son.
About Elsewhere
‘Full of depth… wonderful writing.’ SARAH HALL
‘Dazzlingly good… crackling with playfulness and intelligence.’ DANIELLE McLAUGHLIN
‘Precise, surreal and emotionally devastating’ LUCY CALDWELL
‘How do you know this is all real and happening? How can you be sure you haven’t already died in the earthquake and are just living in the afterlife?’
In her highly anticipated English-language debut, Yan Ge explores isolation in nine iridescent, witty and wondrous tales. Both contemporary and ancient, real and surreal, the stories in Elsewhere range from China to Dublin to London and Stockholm. From a group of writers lounging on the edge of a disaster zone to a mandarin ostracised from his old court trying to avoid assassination, and from a woman who inexplicably loses her voice to a couple who meet all too fleetingly at a cinema in Dublin, these are strange and beguiling stories of dispossession, longing and the diasporic experience.
‘Glorious’ MIA GALLAGHER
‘A gripping, stunning work, worldly and otherworldly.’ MADELEINE THIEN
‘Equal parts shimmering wit and startling emotional depth.’ JEREMY TIAN
‘One of the most surprising writers I’ve read in recent years… fantastic.’ MATT BELL
About Polly Barton
Polly Barton is a Japanese literary translator. Her translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, and Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki. She won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize for Fifty Sounds. She’s also the author of the landmark non-fiction investigative interview collection Porn: An Oral History. She lives in Bristol.
