I Live in the Slums (2020) by Can Xue

Chinese author Can Xue

Book Review: I Live in the Slums (2020)

by Can Xue

   Can Xue is generally regarded as China's top writer of "avant-garde" literary fiction, which makes sense given the topic of the short stories in her collection, I Live in the Slums, which was longlisted for the Booker International Prize.  It caught my eye, coming from China and being written by a woman.  If you read the Chinese literature that makes it into translation- all of which was first approved by the censorship authority of the Chinese Communist Party, it's clear that Chinese writers are allowed to talk about many subjects, but it had better be about events in the relatively distant past OR couched so obliquely that an average reader wouldn't interpret any criticism as referring to the contemporary Chinese Communist Party.    Can Xue, with her slum-rat protagonists, falls into the later category.  You can interpret her stories as criticizing Chinese society but the Government never comes into play.

 Her work is often called "Dream like" and she is compared to writers like Kafka and Borges, and in the context of a short story collection, all the indirection can be tiring.  Many have tipped Can Xue as a Nobel Prize contender, which, reading this collection- I can see it.