Su Tong Book order

Exploring the eerie side of small-town existence, this collection features ten tales that blend dark humor with surreal elements. From a scheme involving a Madonna impersonator to a fatal dispute over a watermelon, the stories capture the complexities of human nature through a lens of cruelty and kindness. Su Tong's unique narrative style creates a nightmarish yet lyrical atmosphere, revealing the bizarre intricacies of everyday life.

"Disgraced Secretary Ku writes letters every day asking for a reprieve. He was banished from the Party when it was discovered he does not have a fish-shaped birthmark on his bottom and is therefore not the son of the revolutionary martyr Deng Siopang, but the issue of a river pirate and a prostitute. Mocked by the citizens of Milltown, Secretary Ku leaves the shore for a new life among the boat people on a fleet of industrial barges during the boom time under Chairman Mao. Refusing to renounce his status as a Party official, he maintains a distance - with Dongliang, his teenage son - from the gossipy lowlifes who populate the barges of the Golden Sparrow River. One day a feral little girl, Huixan, arrives looking for her mother, who has jumped to her death in the river. The boat people, and especially Dongliang, take her to their hearts. But Huixan sows conflict wherever she goes, and soon Dongliang is in the grip of an obsession for her. He takes on Life, Fate and the Party in the only way he knows"--Hardcover book jacket

The first collection of short stories to be published from the bestselling Chinese author of Raise the Red LanternSet during the fall-out of the Cultural Revolution, these bizarre and delicate stories capture the collision of the old China of vanished dynasties with communism and today's tiger economy. The mad woman on the bridge wears a historical gown which she refuses to take off. In the height of summer she stands madly on the bridge, until a young female doctor, bewitched by the beauty of the mad woman's dress, plots to take it from her, with tragic consequences. From the folklorist who becomes the victim of his own rural research, to the doctor whose infertility treatment brings about the birth of a monster child, to a young thief who steals a red train only to have it stolen from him, Su Tong's stories are a scorching look at humanity.

China's uniquely long history has been characterised as the embodiment of wise stewardship and an adherence to Confucian principles of humanity. My Life as Emperor tells the real story of incompetence, cruelty, decadence and an absence of concern for anyone's well-being but those holding power. It is a chilling yet enormously entertaining glimpse of the dark side of nation-building, as well as a vivid insight into the lives of the palace women and the surrounding court intrigue richly embroidered with extraordinary calamities and rampant slaughter.

The brutal realities of the dark places Su Tong depicts in this collection of novellas set in 1930s provincial China -- worlds of prostitution, poverty, and drug addiction -- belie his prose of stunning and simplebeauty. The title novella, "Raise the Red Lantern," which became a critically acclaimed film, tells the story of Lotus, a young woman whose father's suicide forces her to become the concubine of a wealthy merchant. Crushed by loneliness, despair, and cruel treatment, Lotus finds her descent into insanity both a weapon and a refuge. "Nineteen Thirty-Four Escapes" is an account of a family's struggles during one momentous year; plagued by disease, death, and the shady promise of life in a larger town, the family slowly disintegrates. Finally, "Opium Family" details the last years of a landowning clan whose demise is brought about by corruption, lust, and treachery -- fruits of the insidious crop they harvest.