Modern literature, edgy, interesting, any suggestions?

[paike]

Recently I bought a book, Advanced Reader of Contemporary Chinese Short Stories: Reflections on Humanity [Paperback]Ying Wang (Editor), That I'm super impressed with. Its not very hard, maybe Intermediate or somewhat above, but there is one author, 棉棉 that I just LOVE.

http://www.amazon.co...4941804&sr=8-10

I want to find more things like her writing. Her story about a mental patient who killed her father and is in a facitility is incredible. I really felt like I'm in a new world when I read it.

Can anyone else recommend writers like this? I will go and buy one of her books, though I wish I could get it in digital form so I could read it on Pleco, but thats like I guess.

I'm looking for something really interesting to read, edgy, dark, in Chinese and not easy unless I read English books translated and they simply don't feel like "real Chinese".

越变态越好，越变态越新鲜。 =) Any Suggestions Chinese-Forums.com ?

----Fixed that roddy, hit the space bar without looking too closely.

[paike]

One story I've found is 北京娃娃 by 春树。 http://www.amazon.cn/%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC%E5%A8%83%E5%A8%83-%E6%98%A5%E6%A0%91/dp/B003OYJY8S/ref=pd_sim_b_cnclic_6

This kinda looks like something I would be in to, but you never know. Again, just trying to get the ball rolling on insanity, crime, prostitution, dark, cyberpunk (I wish) style of literature... in Chinese. =)

Anyone else into this kind of reading? I'm tired of reading the newspapers or 读者. If I read another story about young lovers waiting for each other, going through another boring day of work, my soul will die.

[roddy]

Just a quick note for anyone searching for the author - it's 棉棉, not 绵绵.

[Daan]

I'm sure you could find quite a few stories by 棉棉 online, so you could read those in Pleco. We read a few for a class last year, and I think they came from a website. I can't access the syllabus any longer, though, so I'm not sure which website that would have been.

[feihong]

Check out her Baike page for a list of her works: http://baike.baidu.c...iew/1353993.htm

At least two of her books are on Sina's book site: http://vip.book.sina...cd=serial&dpc=1

I suspect quite a few of her works are online, you just have to search for each of them by name.

[lansu]

苏童 《河岸》, which begins like this:

别人都生活在土地上，生活在房屋里，我和父亲却生活在船上，这是我父亲十三年前做出的选择，他选择河流，我就只

好离开土地，没什么可抱怨的。

I believe the novel has won the Mann Asian Award, and no doubt has been discussed elsewhere on these forums -- Su Tong is on the short list for the 2011 Mann Booker Award ... His highly anthologized short story 《小莫》 is a very good read ... I downloaded these at http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/ in .txt and then uploaded to Pleco ..

[rob07]

I like 苏童 a lot as well. His novels and novellas are good, but if you want 变态 I recommend you read the short story 舒家兄弟 straight away (only about 10 pages).

www.mypcera.com/book/xian/da/shutong/youth/007.htm

[joshuawbb]

One of my all-time favourite authors is 郭小橹 (Guo Xiaolu, or Xiaolu Guo as written in English versions). Her books are personal takes on modern society based on a combination of her experience, views and imagination.

Perhaps her most well-known book nowadays is 恋人版中英词典 (A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers). She originally wrote it in English but the Chinese version naturally includes the Chinese translation alongside. Guo writes about Z, a young Chinese woman sent by her family to the UK who comes across alien ways of thinking, classic films, appreciating loneliness, eroticism and trying to bridge the generation gap between her and the man she met in the cinema.

I wouldn't call it 'edgy' literature as such but it's unique in that Guo draws from her own experience to describe a young girl dropped into a society poles apart and far more open than her rural hometown - thrown into accepting what she might before have believed as 变态 - and reading the Chinese after the English does great to really see things from her Chinese mindset. You should read the English before the Chinese version because it was purposely written in English to show Z's development. It starts out in humourous broken English, slowly progressing into grammatically correct writing.

Another I would recommend is 饕餮青春的20个瞬间 - 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth. This short novel is about Fen Fang, a young country girl determined to make something of herself in Beijing. Her experiences from working as a film extra to people-watching in McDonalds are told in Fen Fang's witty commentary, through which Guo strived to capture the mouthy humour and nature of a girl trying to make it herself in the toughest city. I think it's a brilliant read, written really well and whilst again I wouldn't call it edgy exactly, it has its gritty darkness as times and it's not like anything else I've read before.

Guo Xiaolu's books are getting tougher to find now in Chinese bookstores (in Xiamen at least), but the above-mentioned books are still on Taobao: http://s.taobao.com/...t=1315022844237

[lansu]

Has anyone read 扎西达娃, Tibetan-Chinese author said to writing in the tradition of 中国魔幻现实主义(Chinese magical realism) ... Works include 《西藏，系在皮绳结上的魂》、《西藏，隐秘岁月》、《骚动的香巴拉》...