Love In The New Millennium

Can Xue’s ambitious, dreamlike novel examines the nebulous, perplexing & unfathomable nature of love of China in the 21st Century. Translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen.

In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabit a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flowerbeds. Conspiracies abound in a community that normalises paranoia. Each life is circumscribed by buried secrets and transcendent delusions. Some try to flee - to a mysterious gambling bordello, or an ancestral home that can only be reached through muddy caves and tunnels. Others seek out the refuge of Nest County, where traditional herbal medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self.  Each life is circumscribed by buried secrets & transcendent delusions.

Can Xue’s masterful love stories for the new millennium trace love’s many guises — satirical, tragic, transient, lasting, nebulous, & fulfilling — against a kaleidoscopic backdrop of commerce & industry, fraud & exploitation, & sex & romance drawn from the East & the West.

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Can Xueis the pseudonym of the renowned avant‑garde author Deng Xiaohua.  Can Xue was longlisted for the 2019 Booker International Prize for Love in the New Millennium, translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen. Can Xue’s other work includes Five Spice Street, Vertical Motion, The Last Lover, Frontier, & I Live in the Slums.