In the city of Yong'an, a fiction writer and amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures, with their greenish stomachs or gills or strange birthmarks, live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness, some with ancient forbears, others engineered as artificial breeds.

Guided - and often misguided - by her elusive university professor and his scrappy sidekick-student Zhong Liang, our narrator finds herself on a mission to track down each species. And as she blunders from one implausible situation to the next, she comes one step closer to revealing her own multifaceted beastliness...

Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China addresses existential questions of identity, being, love and morality with whimsy and grace.

About the Author
Yan Ge was born in Sichuan, China in 1984. She is a fiction writer in both Chinese and English. Yan's first short story collection was published in China when she was seventeen. She is the author of thirteen books, including six novels. She has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Maodun Literature Prize (Best Young Writer). She was named by People's Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China. Her work has been translated into English, French and German, among other languages. She lives in Norwich, UK, and is fluent in English. Jeremy Tiang is a Singaporean writer, translator, and playwright, based in New York City. He has translated more than ten books from Chinese, including novels by Zhang Yueran, Yeng Pway Ngon and Chan Ho-Kei, and is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Grant, an NEA Literary Translation Fellowship, and a People's Literature Prize Mao-Tai Cup for Translation. He has also translated plays by Wei Yu-Chia, Zhan Jie and Xu Nuo. He is the author of a short story collection (It Never Rains on National Day, shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2015) and a novel (State of Emergency, Epigram Books, 2017). Jeremy Tiang is a Singaporean writer, translator, and playwright, based in New York City. He has translated more than ten books from Chinese, including novels by Zhang Yueran, Yeng Pway Ngon and Chan Ho-Kei, and is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Grant, an NEA Literary Translation Fellowship, and a People's Literature Prize Mao-Tai Cup for Translation. He has also translated plays by Wei Yu-Chia, Zhan Jie and Xu Nuo. His own plays include Salesman , The Last Days of Limehouse and A Dream of Red Pavilions (adapted from the novel by Cao Xueqin), and he is the author of a short story collection (It Never Rains on National Day, shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2015) and a novel (State of Emergency, Epigram Books, 2017). One of the most acclaimed and active translators into English, he was recently honoured as the London Book Fair's inaugural Translator in Residence.

Awards
Runner-up for The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2021.



Book Information
ISBN 9781911284444
Author Yan Ge
Format Paperback
Imprint Tilted Axis Press
Publisher Tilted Axis Press