An Empty Room

A dazzling cycle of short stories by one of China s most revered contemporary writers and one of the world s leading artist-intellectuals. An Empty Room is the first book by the celebrated Chinese writer Mu Xin toappear in English. A cycle of thirteen tenderly evocative stories written whileMu Xin was living in exile, this collection is reminiscent of the structural beautyof Hemingway s In Our Time and the imagistic power of Kawabata s palm-of-the-hand stories. From the ordinary (a bus accident) to the unusual (Buddhisthalos) to the wise (Goethe, Lao Zi), Mu Xin s wandering I interweaves plotswith philosophical grace and spiritual profundity. A small blue bowl becomes asymbol of vanishing childhood; a painter in a race against fading memory scribblesnotes in an underground prison during the Cultural Revolution; an abandonedtemple room holds a dark mystery. An Empty Room is a soul-stirringpage turner, a Sebaldian reverie of passing time, loss, and humanity regained.