The thirteen stories of Dialogues in Paradise are eloquent in a way the West associates with both the modern and the ancient: the dark oracles of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the paranoid mystery of Kafka, the moving stream of Woolf.
The work of Can Xue (a pseudonym of Changsa writer Deng Xiao-hua) renews our consciousness of the long tradition of the irrational in our literature, where dreams and reality constitute one territory, its borders open, the passage back and forth barely discernible.
She fuses lyrical purity with the darkest visions of the grotesque and the result is a unique literary experience.
About the Author Can Xue (the pseudonym of Deng Xiao-hua) lives in Changsha, Hunan Province, People's Republic of China.
Dialogues in Paradise is the first collection of her work in English.
Ronald R.
Janssen teaches contemporary literature and criticism at Hofstra University.
Jian Zhang is a faculty member in the English Department at East China Normal University.
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Northwestern University Press Dialogues in paradise, paperback/xue can
