Page 221 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

CAN XUE, pseudonym of Deng Xiaohua, has written many novels, volumes of
literary criticism and philosophy, and short works of fiction. I Live in the Slums
is her tenth book to appear in English. Her novel The Last Lover (2014) won the
Best Translated Book Award for Fiction. Five Spice Street (2009) was a finalist
for the Neustadt Prize. Frontier (2017) made the 2017 “Best of” lists of National
Public Radio, the Boston Globe, and World Literature Today. Love in the New
Millennium (2018) was long-listed for the Man Booker International Prize and

the Best Translated Book Award. In 2001, Can Xue moved to Beijing from
Changsha, Hunan. She has recently moved to Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, where
she continues writing and jogging every day.

KAREN GERNANT and CHEN ZEPING have translated four previous books by Can
Xue: Blue Light in the Sky (2006), Five Spice Street (2009), Vertical Motion
(2011), and Frontier (2017). Gernant, professor emerita of Chinese history at

Southern Oregon University, and Chen, professor of Chinese linguistics at
Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, have been translating contemporary Chinese
fiction for more than twenty years. In addition to their work with Can Xue, they
have published a collection of stories by Zhang Kangkang (2011), a volume of
stories by Alai (2012), and two novellas by Zhang Yihe (2017).