A golden fireball drops into a lake in a nameless Chinese city. Children, park staff and livestreamers begin disappearing, one after another. Those who survive, or come into contact with survivors, find their bodies fusing with non-human objects: trees, walls, the ground. Soon, the city puts its citizens under lockdown. As first responders try their best to contain the destructive force, one researcher cracks the code-like messages left behind by the victims. But in order to prove his theory, he needs to pay the price with his own erasure from people’s memories. Covid parallels and satire loom large in this literary debut by Lin Gesheng, author of three speculative novels. Deftly blending elements of horror, detective fiction and sci-fi, the gripping titular story serves as the perfect vessel for the traumatic experience of Chinese under lockdowns during the past few years, as they went through fear, grief and voluntary or forced amnesia.

Journalists can often make good fiction writers, and Guo Shuang is one of them. Having worked as a reporter and editor in mainland China for 10 years, she turned to fiction writing in 2014, and in 2017 won a lucrative literary award in Taiwan. Set in contemporary China, Guo’s second short story collection focuses on relationships that bend social norms and resist simplification. Two former reporters bond over an aborted investigation that has haunted them for years; an art teacher takes her father on a group trip to Moscow, only to discover a hitherto unknown side to him; two friends anchor themselves to each other over the years, as they venture into the world; a son, suffering from a chronic illness, encourages his mother to rediscover herself. Grounded in reality as they are, these stories shine with a dreamy, fairy-tale-like quality — just as the moon itself is both a solid planet and a timeless symbol.

With three acclaimed short story collections under her belt at the age of 33, Wang Zhanhei is recognized by many as the voice of her generation, embodying the spirit of a flâneur as she strolls around cities to collect anecdotes for her fiction. This sense of freedom and fluidity permeates her latest collection, the titular story of which follows a barber from his blue-collar neighborhood into the heart of Shanghai, where he finds a sense of belonging in an underground queer community. For those who reached adulthood in the early aughts, Wang’s work provides an opportunity to reminisce about a past that was by no means perfect, but at least hopeful. The contrast between that past and the present is stark. Although this collection was published before the pandemic, it hints at what was to come with its attention to declining supermarkets, aging communities, and young people who take it upon themselves to remember and dignify what has been lost.

These two novellas, originally published in 2003 and collected together in this reprint, represent some of Yuan Zhesheng’s best works, at the pinnacle of modern Taiwanese literature. Both stories are set in bygone eras. “The Monkey” is a coming-of-age story of a boy growing up in a military dependents’ village, for the families of Kuomintang soldiers. “The Buddha Pond” chronicles a love triangle between the daughter of a singsong girl (high-class prostitute), the apprentice of a wood sculptor, and the disciple of an old monk. First-time readers may be struck by Yuan’s deceptively simple yet highly distilled language, which massages away pain and sorrow in precise descriptions. The village on a rainy day is “soaked in a glass of boiled water that has gone cold.” The pet monkey’s iron chain dragging on the ground sounds like “a traditional craftsman working away on a wet and quiet dark night.” With evocative details and masterful use of dialect, Yuan perfectly captures his characters’ heartbreak and regret.

Reading Taiwanese writer Huang Liqun’s stories is like being inside a high-pressure cooker. Cooking inside are unfulfilled desires, acute loneliness, misguided obsessions — a recipe for disaster. Huang’s experience as a screenwriter enables her to summon an eclectic range of characters (an acupuncturist, a weightlifter-turned-real-estate-agent, a fortune teller, a ghost turned into a WiFi signal) and convincingly interweave their professions into their personalities and trajectories. As diligently as they lead their lives, her characters are burdened by invisible forces, from gender stereotypes to a paralyzing sense of fate, and their stories invariably end with a shrill scream. But this doesn’t mean that the collection is dreary. On the contrary, A Room by the Sea is enormous fun to read. First published in Taiwan in 2012 and now available in mainland China, these stories are probably close to what Pu Songling would have written were he alive today. ∎