Strange Beasts of China

Ge, Yan

NEW title

Luminous and beguiling... Yan is a deft and engaging storyteller, with a proclivity for dramatic revelations... Yan's rare versatility and inventiveness keeps the narrative continuously surprising. ... Strange Beasts transfixes you like a vivid dream, offering glimpses of the waking world contorted into uncanny forms. -- The Washington Post

Magical realism of the best kind, where the spectacular is paired with just enough irony and daffy humor to keep it grounded on earth--or whichever world this fun and beguiling book takes place. -- Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

Delightful. Through the narrator's futile quest to catalog beasts, Yan captures the fluidness of city life, the way urban space defies definition even for people hellbent on making sense of it. --The New York Times

A page-turner whose dense, fantastical atmosphere lingers long after the read. --Vulture

Strange Beasts of China feels like a riddle and a parable and a dream, the kind of book you want to get lost in. --The Philadelphia Inquirer

Mixes a sort of Borgesian bestiary of mysterious creatures with a deep sense of urban andsocial alienation to produce an enthralling and fascinating narrative. A breath of fresh air in theoften hard-sf dominated field of recently translated Chinese science fiction, this novel is a must-read for fans of Vandermeer, Borges, or fantasy fiction that blurs the line between genre and literary fiction. --Booklist (starred review)

The overall effect of Yan's storytelling is dreamy and hypnotic, sometimes opaque but always captivating. These cryptic but well-told tales offer much to chew on. --Publisher's Weekly