Five Spice Street

“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

“[Xue] blends surrealism à la Dalí with a hefty dose of existential angst. Prickly and provocative, Five Spice Street poses penetrating questions about the search for identity and the definition of self.”—Booklist

“Can Xue’s novel approach to writing fiction in Five Spice Street offers the reader a delightful puzzle whose pieces constantly change shape and shatter into ever smaller fragments.”—John Madera, Bookslut

“The inhabitants of Five Spice Street gossip, spy and seduce one another in this lovely surrealist romp. . . . The translators do a marvelous job of preserving the prose’s lyricism, which enhances the surreal scenes that seem to be the stuff of everyday life on Five Spice Street. Xue’s stridently weird and vainglorious characters are quite a bizarre retinue, and the air of paranoia and mystery is perfectly captured.”—Publishers Weekly

Shortlisted for the 2016 Neustadt International Prize for Literature given by World Literature Today

“[Five Spice Street is] an absolutely hilarious, pseudo-journalistic account of a scandalous affair in a small neighborhood in China.”—James Hannaham in a NYTimes.com interview

“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

~Chad Post, Publishers Weekly