The Last Lover

“A maverick outsider, the Chinese writer Can Xue described herself in a recent interview as ‘an experimental novelist with a strongly philosophical temperament.’ True enough, but nothing in that bland label would prepare you for the mind-stretching enchantments of The Last Lover, one of the first of her large-scale works to appear in English. . . . Translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen with all the hallucinatory clarity that her prose demands, Can Xue guides us through that bewitching place.”—Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

“[A] mind-bending novel. . . . Xue succeeds in creating a unique, immersive, tale of ‘intersecting dreamworlds.’”—Publishers Weekly

“[Can Xue] has found not just a new direction but a new dimension to move in, a realm where conscious beings experience space, time, and each other unbound from the old rules. . . . [The Last Lover] is arguably a singular accomplishment.”—Nell Pach, Music and Literature

“One of the most raved-about works of translated fiction this year.”—Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire, “10 New Translated Books to Read Right Now”

“[Can Xue] sheds the constraints of reality for the peculiarly detailed realm of the imagination. The Last Lover is a skillful, enigmatic investigation of love that swells and subverts traditional narratives.”—Alex McElroy, Colorado Review

Book of the Year for 2014, chosen by The Independent

Winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award, fiction category, organized by Three Percent

Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015, given by Booktrust

Longlisted for the 2015 American Literary Translators Asssociation, National Translation Prize in Prose.

&ldquot;If China has one possibility of a Nobel laureate it is Can Xue.”—Susan Sontag