Short stories
Dialogues in Paradise
天堂裏的對話
Can Xue · 1988
Synopsis
A collection of short narratives, written and published in journals from 1985 to 1988 according to the Asian Ethnology review of the English edition. Despite the title, most are monologues in which communication fails; oppression, suffering and isolation recur, in grotesque images of bodies that dissolve or catch fire and a profusion of animals. The Paper Republic critic sees in them strange fables, close to folklore, that keep their distance from the Cultural Revolution as well as from the search for roots.
Context
The book appeared in January 1988 from Zuojia, according to Paper Republic. The author had published her first stories in 1985, one of them in Renmin wenxue, and her first book in Taiwan in 1987. Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang produced an English translation as early as 1989, Dialogues in Paradise, followed by an afterword on the “fits of madness” of her writing; Françoise Naour made a selection in French from it, at Gallimard in 1991, under the title Dialogues en paradis. The English publication, at the time of the Beijing spring, steered Western reception towards political readings, according to Paper Republic.
Who it is for
Short, disconcerting stories, with no continuous plot; a selection translated by Françoise Naour makes it possible to read them in French.
Prizes and reception
Its author is regularly cited among the favourites for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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