CWN#4: 2024 in short fiction // Mind-bending fiction by literary newcomers
Featuring Niu Jianzhe 牛健哲 and Cui Jun 崔君
Welcome to the fourth issue of the Cold Window Newsletter. This time: the second part of my unscientific roundup of 2024 fiction, featuring the short-fiction writers on everyone’s lips last year; and new books from a pair of accomplished but lesser-known authors.
EOY: Critically Acclaimed Chinese Short Fiction of 2024
My unscientific round-up of Best Books of the Year lists last month was stuffed with ambitious creative nonfiction projects and novels by long-established authors. But if you dig just under the top layer of prestigious, widely circulated books that crowded the top of those lists, you’ll find a rich crop of short story and novella collections that won wide acclaim last year, including from many young writers who hadn’t been well-known in China until 2024.
Here’s a rundown of some of those writers. If my survey last month was unscientific, this month’s is purely vibes-based, drawing more from my sense of who was getting talked about in my circles than from an objective accounting of published critical opinion. Take it as a reading list for the new year and/or a watchlist for writers who are going places—that’s what I’ll be doing.
At the top of the list are a vanguard of young writers—coincidentally all women—who came out with acclaimed collections last year that significantly increased their profiles:
龚万莹 Gong Wanying, from Fujian, whose collection 《岛屿的厝》Islands Against the Current appeared on many end-of-year lists (as I noted last month)
林戈声 Lin Gesheng, whose debut collection《纷纷水火》Water and Fire Pouring Down “deftly [blends] elements of horror, detective fiction and sci-fi” in its title story to explore the “fear, grief and voluntary or forced amnesia” of pandemic lockdowns, as Na Zhong wrote on the China Books Review last year
顾文艳 Gu Wenyan, from Zhejiang, of whose collection《一跃而下》Jumping Down Zhang Pingjin wrote: “Its unique style is a mixture of passionate seriousness and knowing self-mockery, offering endless insights to sufficiently experienced and informed readers. You understand it intuitively; it makes you chuckle constantly and sets your brain churning.”
And finally, 李静睿Li Jingrui (author of 《木星时刻》Jupiter Time) and 叶昕昀 Ye Xinyun (author of 《最小的海》The Smallest Sea), whose collections I frequently spotted in readers’ hands out in the wild in 2024 even though they technically came out in late 2023
New work by favorite writers of this newsletter also appeared on various best-of lists:
王占黑 Wang Zhanhei (featured in CWN#1) was cited as a best author of the year by 《文艺批评》Arts and Culture Criticism on the strength of her new collection《正常接触》 Normal Contact.
In the same Arts and Culture Criticism feature, 郑小驴 Zheng Xiaolü (featured in CWN#3) won a nod for his collection 《南方巴赫》Southern Bach.
孙频 Sun Pin (featured in CWN#3) had new novellas entered into the highly prestigious literary awards lists announced by both 《收获》Harvest Literary Magazine and 《扬子江文学评论》Yangtze Literary Review, and 班宇Ban Yu (featured in CWN#2) placed first on the Harvest best short story list for his new piece 《飞鸟与地下》 “The Bird and the Underground.”
A few long-established writers came out with well-reviewed new collections—which always makes me happy, since many writers seem to veer toward longer novels as they start to accumulate prestige:
尹学芸 Yin Xueyun’s new collection 《生死结》The Knot of Life and Death was named one of Douban’s Best Books of the Year.
Just below her on the Douban list was the late Tibetan writer and filmmaker 万玛才旦 Pema Tseden and his posthumous fiction collection 《松木的清香》The Fresh Scent of the Pines.
李修文 Li Xiuwen, more known for his novels in recent years, released the well-reviewed collection 《猛虎下山》Tiger Comes Down the Mountain.
And finally, three young authors to look out for in 2025: 杜梨 Du Li, 朱婧 Zhu Jing, and 王玉珏 Wang Yujue. They didn’t release books in 2024, but their ubiquity in literary magazines throughout the year and on year-end short fiction roundups is a sure sign that they’re poised to release major collections soon. Let’s see in a year if I was right...
Feature: Mind-bending fiction by literary newcomers
Even though my main goal in this newsletter is to guide you toward fiction that is acclaimed in China but underappreciated in the West, I’ve always known that I also wanted to profile writing that is underappreciated in China from time to time. I often come across writers who seem to have flown under the radar of most critics in China, or who are still too earlier in their careers to have garnered much attention. When these writers seem to be producing some of the best work in the whole country, the urge to call attention to it so that I’m not alone in my admiration becomes nearly irresistible.
One of the writers who fits this description for me recently is 牛健哲 Niu Jianzhe, born 1979, who has been quietly publishing strange, tightly written stories in major literary magazines for years. As of this January, some of those stories have now been collected in a slim collection called 《现在开始失去》Loss Begins Here. Niu has cited Jorge Luis Borges as an influence, and you can tell why: flipping through his stories, you begin to realize that nearly all are structured as introspective thought experiments, with specific setting and character details mostly stripped away in favor of an almost neurotically precise exploration of some central concept. For example, in 《造物须臾》 “The Moment of Creation” (not collected in the new collection), the narrator wakes up on a bedroom floor with no memory of who he is or what he’s doing there. His panicked attempts to deduce his own identity and that of the women beside him are tense and absorbing, even though the action of the plot never leaves his own head.
Borges’ short stories always struck me as erudite and restrained, sometimes strange but always firmly bound by logic. Niu, on the other hand, is not afraid to let his thought experiments go absolutely bonkers. The piece that really sold me on his writing was《音声轶话》“Lost Phonetics,” surely one of the wildest pieces of linguistics-inspired fiction ever written. In it, a mild-mannered hobbyist becomes obsessed with an obscure language called Luozuo 洛佐语, which he studies using instructional tapes he receives in the mail. He begins to sacrifice everything he has in search of perfect pronunciation: his job, his family, his mother tongue. If you’re going to enjoy Niu’s fiction, you have to be prepared for some hard left turns, kinky constructed-language sex included. But for all of the strangeness, “Lost Phonetics” delves into the manic feeling of acquiring a new skill in a way that I found very relatable as a language-learner. I emerged from this twenty-page linguistic journey through fourth-person pronouns and eerily eloquent cognates feeling like I’d just woken up from a dream.
Niu Jianzhe 牛健哲
Born 1979
Recommended story in Chinese: 《音声轶话》(full story)
Niu Jianzhe was born in Shenyang in 1979. He has been published in journals including Harvest, People’s Literature, and Dangdai. His work has entered the Harvest Best Literature of the Year list multiple times and received the eighth Yu Dafu Fiction Award.
I’ll pair my endorsement of Niu with an introduction to a very different writer at the beginning of her career: 崔君 Cui Jun, born 1992, whose sophomore collection《有山有谷》 Hills and Valleys is out this month. The cover is gorgeous.
The collection’s titular novella feels cavernous and vast compared to Niu’s claustrophobic thought experiments. In it, a woman named Xiao Zhen reestablishes a relationship with a dying elder from the remote religious community in which she was raised. As the ornery elder slips toward death, Xiao Zhen’s memories of her own youth begin to bubble to the surface, forming a complex, nonchronological braid of stories that are part murder mystery, part cult story, part domestic drama. The language and plot can both be difficult to parse. But it takes ambition and generosity to stuff this much into a single novella, and the ease with which Cui pulls it off makes her a talent to watch.
Cui Jun 崔君
Born 1992
Recommended story in Chinese: 《有山有谷》(excerpt)
Cui Jun was born in Mengyin, Shandong province, in 1992. She received her M.A. in Literature from Beijing Normal University. Her fiction can be found in journals including Harvest and October. She has published the collections 《冰淇淋厂冬天在干吗》What Does the Ice Cream Factory Do in Winter? and《有山有谷》Hills and Valleys. She lives in Beijing.
That’s all for this time. Next issue: a translation collective you should know, and I follow through on my promise to return to Dongbei. Thanks for reading!