Can Xue draws the reader into a world of the grotesque and the surreal, of uncertain spaces and indeterminate identities, of sexual menace and psychological disorientation. These novellas are about life in post-Mao China, but not the China of social realism or of Western fantasy. At the forefront of China's new literary trends, these two novellas - Yellow mud street and Old floating cloud - explore Chinese reality through images of the absurd, sudden and illogical juxtapositions, and the limitless transformations induced by a unique imagination.

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