Born and raised in Shanghai, Zhou Jianing published her first novel at 19 and has since become one of the most influential voices of the post-80s generation, penning over 10 novels and story collections. Known for her introspective, sometimes passive, characters, Zhou has turned her gaze outward in her recent work. Now, her characters use inertia to resist the oppressive, materialistic milieu around them. Ethereal Bonds That Never End is her most successful attempt yet. After losing touch with her best friend from high school, a woman reflects on a failed education experiment she participated in in the early 1990s. A loose pattern of lost youth, thwarted idealism and broken friendships emerges. Spanning the 1990s to the end of the pandemic, this slim, taut novel is steeped in Zhou’s signature clarity and ennui, and serves as a therapeutic read for those looking to better understand China’s Lost Generation.

Imagine Succession meets The Good Wife, set in contemporary China’s fiercely competitive fashion industry. The trilogy of novels LINO follows three strong-willed women from three generations as they navigate careers at LINO Fashion, a Chinese conglomerate. Song Lingnuo is a recent graduate, hard up financially and desperate to keep her job in a stagnant economy. Shi Jin, in a bid to prove herself, switches departments, only to find her new boss behaving inappropriately toward her. Ji Xia, in her late forties, leaves a senior position at an international brand to launch her own consultancy. What ties these women together is their relentless drive, unapologetic ambition and unconventional views on relationships. While LINO is a fictional brand, the novel is so steeped in industry insider details that it could only have been written by a true veteran. Written under the pen name Xing Yanyan, the books were originally serialized on online literary forums and the author’sWeChat blog. With solid characterization, efficient pacing and snappy dialogue, this hefty trilogy is a compulsive read you’ll want to pass along to your friends the moment you finish it.

You may recognize Dong Lai’s name from my last column, but this short story collection, published within a year of her debut novel Phoenix Seeds, marks a departure from her past work. Growing up, Dong was haunted by her female identity. Her family favored boys and she witnessed relatives trapped in unhappy marriages. She wrote from the male point of view as an escape, but upon turning 30 she chose to confront questions about marriage, motherhood and career. Her self-reflection inspired the six stories collected here, all featuring female protagonists. These women lead ordinary lives until circumstances catch them off guard. One is unexpectedly reunited with a younger sister given away at birth. Another tries to reconnect with her mother after her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, only to discover the painful truth about her parents’ emotionally estranged marriage. One story that stands out follows a young woman who becomes a kung fu master’s disciple, an experience that leaves a lifelong impact. “Fear is an illusion,” Dong writes in the afterword: the best way to defeat fear is to look it in the face and move on.

In his latest nonfiction book, Another Country, acclaimed Chinese reporter Yang Xiao retraces his travels to Germany over the last 13 years in order to answer a central question: how do a country and its people reckon with a dark past, as well as their own role in it? During his visits in 2012, 2019 and 2024, Yang toured war museums, historical landmarks and Nazi concentration camp memorial sites across Germany, interviewing researchers, writers, curators and descendants of eyewitnesses. The more places he visited and people he spoke with, the more he realized that the 20th century is not over: we are still living in its fallout. Interweaving personal travelogue, testimonies, writers’ reflections and academic research, the book unfolds like a well-paced documentary, following the author’s journey in rough chronological order while maintaining a clear thematic thread throughout. Yang is one of many Chinese journalists turning their gaze globally and contributing to China’s booming travel-writing scene. One must wonder if his grappling with Germany’s historical memory is an attempt to answer questions that are much closer to home, but not so easy to write about.

The literary subgenre of dark academia has been all the rage in recent years. In this short story collection, it finds a new iteration that’s quieter, yet no less dark. In Su Zhenshu’s hands, dark academia is less about gothic aesthetics and obsession with knowledge than regimented social orders, entrenched sexism and power struggles. A historian by training based in Kyoto, Su is alert to the challenges faced by female intellectuals across time and place. Populating her first collection in 11 years is a cast of sidelined women: young researchers struggling to survive; a Qing dynasty female scholar with no outlet for her talent; a Kung Opera actress with no hope of advancement; and an overeducated female PhD stuck in a career limbo. The title is taken from a traditional tongue twister in which an old monk takes his disciples to admire the Exquisite Pagoda, counting all the way up to the 13th level. Suddenly, a fierce gust blows everything apart: the stars are scattered all over the sky, the monk and his disciples are gone, and the scriptures are torn apart — a fitting symbol for a book about a broken academic system and false hope. ∎