Asian Short Stories

Xuan Juliana Wang's remarkable debut introduces us to the new and changing face of Chinese youth. From fuerdai (second-generation rich kids) to a glass-swallowing qigong grandmaster, her dazzling, formally inventive stories upend the immigrant narrative to reveal a new experience of belonging: of young people testing the limits of who they are, in a world as vast and varied as their ambitions. In stories of love, family, and friendship, here are the voices, faces, and stories of a new generation never before captured in fiction.

From one of China’s most famous contemporary writers, here is a stunning collection of stories, selected from the best of Yu Hua’s early work, that shows his far-reaching influence on a pivotal period in Chinese literature. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yu Hua and other young Chinese writers began to reimagine their national literature. Departing from conventional realism in favor of a more surreal and subjective approach inspired by Kafka, Faulkner, and Borges, the boundary-pushing fiction of this period reflected the cultural changes sweeping the world’s most populous nation.

When Trisha Low moves West, her journey is motivated by the need to arrive “somewhere better” - someplace utopian, like revolution; or safe, like home; or even clarifying, like identity. Instead, she faces the end of her relationships, a family whose values she has difficulty sharing, and America’s casual racism, sexism, and homophobia. In this book-length essay, the problem of how to account for one’s life comes to the fore - sliding unpredictably between memory, speculation, self-criticism, and art criticism, Low seeks answers that she knows she won’t find.

Twenty-one years after the publication of his landmark debut collection Yellow, Don Lee returns to the short story form for his sixth book, The Partition. The Partition is an updated exploration of Asian American identity, this time with characters who are presumptive model minorities in the arts, academia, and media. Spanning decades, these nine novelistic stories traverse an array of cities, from Tokyo to Boston, Honolulu to El Paso, touching upon transient encounters in local bars, restaurants, and hotels.

В этот сборник вошли как принесшие Акутагаве мировую славу и автоматически ассоциирующиеся с его именем исторические рассказы и новеллы (включая легендарную "В чаще", послужившую основой для сценария бессмертного фильма "Расёмон" Куросавы), так и менее известные западному читателю, но почитающиеся на родине автора еще выше рассказы, действие которых происходит на фоне современной автору реальности Японии начала ХХ века, еще сохраняющей немало черт национального своеобразия, но жадно и стремительно "европеизирующейся".

The daughter of a poor Chinese cobbler, Lijuan's beauty and grace captivates the heart of her village. But when a curse befalls her, will she persevere, or fall victim to its power? The Enchanted Dance is a tale of raw passion, courage, and love. Step, if you dare, into its pages. Lijuan will captivate your heart, and hold it in the timelessness of her embrace .

Contos de guerreiros japoneses revelará aos seus ouvintes os mais preciosos valores japoneses: disciplina, lealdade, dedicação, perseverança, auto sacrifício, humildade e devoção. Tal arcabouço ético e narrativas envolventes recebem a ilustração de Shusui Okakura e outros artistas, fazendo ecoar da forma mais bela o passado e a memória japonesa.

Quiet As They Come is a beautiful and at times brutal portrait of a people caught between two cultures. Set in San Francisco from the 1980s to the present day, this debut collection explores the lives of several families of Vietnamese immigrants as they struggle to adjust to life in their new country, often haunted by the memories and customs of their old lives in Vietnam. While some are able to survive and assimilate, others are crushed by the promise of the "American Dream."

Much like Lee Chang-dong’s internationally renowned films (Burning, Secret Sunshine, and Poetry), these brilliant, unsettling tales, originally published in Korea in the 1980s and now translated into English for the first time, investigate themes of injustice, betrayal, and terror—on both an intimate and national scale. Lee writes deeply and hauntingly about conflicts between family, the powerful and the vulnerable, conformists and rebels.

Meng Jin’s critically acclaimed debut novel, Little Gods, was praised as “spectacular and emotionally polyphonic (Omar El-Akkad, BookPage), “powerful” (Washington Post), and “meticulously observed, daringly imagined” (Claire Messud). Now Jin turns her considerable talents to short fiction, in ten thematically linked stories.

A young girl is haunted by a Death God. Her only hope is a rum-drinking, bar-fighting paranormal investigator with a bad attitude...After dropping out of Harvard, Kana Cold started a business as a paranormal investigator. Most of her cases were hoaxes, much to Kana’s disappointment, until one case involving a little girl and her powerful demon - a Death God - opened the door to the real Paranormal Underground...changing Kana’s life forever.

This book is about one of my childhood friends; it is a tribute to him.

In The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, you can dine at a restaurant at the end of the universe, cultivate to immortality in the high mountains, watch roses perform Shakespeare, or arrive at the island of the gods on the backs of giant fish to ensure that the world can bloom. Written, edited, and translated by a female and nonbinary team, these stories have never before been published in English and represent both the richly complicated past and the vivid future of Chinese science fiction and fantasy.

The electric, unsettling, and often surreal stories in Let's Go Let's Go Let's Go explore the alienated, technology-mediated lives of restless Asian and Asian American women today. A woman escapes into dating simulations to forget her best friend’s abandonment; a teenager begins to see menacing omens on others’ bodies after her double eyelid surgery; reunited schoolmates are drawn into the Japanese mountains to participate in an uncanny social experiment; a supernatural karaoke machine becomes a K-pop star’s channel for redemption. In every story, characters refuse dutiful, docile stereotypes.

Steven Zhao is in the closet. The conservative closet, that is. He might be a first-generation Chinese American, but don't let the good looks and cushy San Fran apartment fool you. Deep down, Steve's got his own personal issues. So, how is he friends with a Dog Mom Lesbian who lives in this apartment complex?

In the fifteen masterful stories that make up this collection, Jai Chakrabarti crosses continents and cultures to explore what it means to cultivate a family today, across borders, religions, and race.

Based on traditional Vietnamese folk tales told to Violet Kupersmith by her grandmother, these fantastical, chilling, and thoroughly contemporary stories are a boldly original exploration of Vietnamese culture, addressing both the immigrant experience and the lives of those who remained behind. Lurking in the background of them all is a larger ghost—that of the Vietnam War, whose legacy continues to haunt us.

From the vulnerable and disenfranchised to the educated and privileged, the characters in this extraordinary collection embody the diversity of the Chinese diaspora past and present. In these deeply affecting stories, Jack Wang subverts expectations as he captures the hope, pain, and sacrifices of the millions who journey into the unknown to create better lives, and he explores the shifting boundaries of morality, the intimacies and failings of love, and the choices circumstances force us to make.

Josie Tucker is in a pickle. She's a rising food critic in the blogosphere, but she can't eat. Her testy stomach is always in knots - is it anxiety, a food allergy, or something else? With a Boston blueblood matron funding her adventures, and a trio of loyal friends, Josie finds herself in scrape after bizarre scrape, barely escaping by the skin of her neck.

In this captivating collection from the Shaanxi region, considered the cradle of Chinese civilization, twenty disparate and unique voices come together to show a China caught between new-world advancements and old-world traditions. From the homeland of China’s first dynasty and the world-famous terra-cotta warriors, these tales show rugged rural life colliding with fast-paced city life; hollow arranged marriages juxtaposed with torrid forbidden love affairs; and the vanity of newly minted millionaires clashing with the desperation of the poor.