Mutual Strangers

Collecting two decades of remembrances from China’s premier literary caricaturist, these short stories offer bite-sized misdeeds committed by Nanjing’s underground literati. Freed from family duties, the “boys” spend their nights freewheeling and trying their luck with pretty girls amid a haze of cigarette smoke and cheap beer. However, as the evening drags on, trouble brews and dates turn sour. Their only real solace is an unspoken camaraderie. After the tales of cruel pranks, cramped apartments, sleazy karaoke bars and dead cats, maybe the joke will be on them – but for now, the night has only just begun.

Gu Qian started writing in the 1980s while working various jobs including as a labourer, beekeeper, advertising sales manager and magazine editor. His works include the short story collections Flat Out, Hi, Long Time No See and Mutual Strangers, and the novels Go Elsewhere and Civilian Life. Often anthologised, he has won the Nanjing Gold Medal for Literature and Art. He lives in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Jack Hargreaves is a translator of Yorkshire extraction. His literary work, recognised by English PEN and PEN America, includes the full-length works Winter Pasture by Li Juan and Seeing by Chai Jing, both co-translated with Yan Yan, Wait and See by Zhu Hui, co-translated with Jun Liu and A Submarine in the Night by Chen Chuncheng. He writes for the China Books Review.