Description:
The first book in the new Calico series from Two Lines Press, THAT WE MAY LIVE represents the vanguard of speculative fiction being published in China today with seven stories that are utterly disorienting yet disturbingly familiar
Brief description:
Sarah Coolidge received her BA in comparative literature from Bard College. She enjoys reading books in Spanish and English, and she writes essays on photography and international literature.
Review Quotes:
"This remarkable anthology of Chinese speculative fiction offers seven tales of societal responsibility and individual freedom. . . . By turns cryptic and revealing, phantasmagorical and straightforward, these tales balance reality and fantasy on the edge of a knife."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"With enthralling and precise language, this first book in Two Lines Press' Calico series of collected translated literature impresses...This collection of speculative Chinese fiction is compelling and provocative, exploring the thin line between reality and absurdity. " --Booklist (starred review)
"Although billed as a collection of 'speculative Chinese fiction, ' That We May Live at its core references global philosophical quandaries and anxieties. It describes not just the conditions that can shackle and fail us, but also the complex choices around those conditions that we can engage in. While there are no clear roadmaps, the stories in That We May Live place interpretation, and therefore agency, into the hands of the reader. As Chen Si'an writes at the conclusion, 'This sentence he had read somewhere in a book was only the beginning. It was up to him to write what came after.' Now that we have been awakened, it is up to us to decide how we might survive." --Asymptote
"That We May Live is an unforgettable collection, serving as evidence to the fact that sometimes, like a distant star, our world is seen most clearly when viewed askance." --The Arkansas International
"...give[s] the reader an oblique insight into contemporary social issues in Hong Kong and China, issues which however, could occur just about anywhere." --Asian Review of Books