Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Five Spice Street

Five Spice Street

Chen, Zeping
Can Xue
Gernant, Karen

Paperback

Series: Margellos World Republic of Letters

Literary Fiction

ISBN10: 0300167962
ISBN13: 9780300167962
Publisher: Yale Univ Pr
Published: Apr 24 2012
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.72
Height: 0.79 Width: 4.85 Depth: 7.48
Language: English
The first full-length novel by Chinese author Can Xue to appear in English

There's no other writer in China like Can Xue . . . strange, surreal, and very compelling . . . [and] this novel is probably the best place to start.--Chad Post, Publishers Weekly

Five Spice Street tells the story of a street in an unnamed city whose inhabitants speculate on the life of a mysterious Madam X. The novel interweaves their endless suppositions into a work that is at once political parable and surreal fantasia. Some think X is 50 years old, others that she is 22. Some believe she has occult powers and has thereby enslaved the young men of the street; others think she is a clever trickster playing mind games with the common people. Who is Madam X? How has she brought the good people of Five Spice Street to their knees either in worship or in exasperation? The unknown narrator takes no sides in the endless interplay of visions, arguments, and opinions. The investigation rages, as the street becomes a Walpurgisnacht of speculations, fantasies, and prejudices. Madam X is a vehicle whereby the people bare their souls, through whom they reveal themselves even as they try to penetrate the mystery of her extraordinary powers.

Exploring the collective consciousness of this little street of ordinary people, Can Xue penetrates the deepest existential anxieties of the present day--whether in China or in the West--where the inevitable impermanence of identity struggles with the narrative within which identity must compose itself.

Also in

Literary Fiction

View All