Elsewhere: 'Wonderful writing' Sarah Hall

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My girlfriend has been dead for ten years now,” Old Stone said. “She struggled with anorexia for years and killed herself in the winter of 1998.”

Yan Ge was born Dai Yuexing in 1984 in Sichuan, China. She began publishing in 1994. She completed a PhD in comparative literature at Sichuan University and is the Chair of the China Young Writers Association. Her writing uses a lot of Sichuanese, rather than Standard Chinese (Mandarin).[1] People’s Literature (Renmin Wenxue 人民文学) magazine recently chose her – in a list reminiscent of The New Yorker's ‘20 under 40’ – as one of China's twenty future literary masters. In 2012 she was chosen as Best New Writer by the prestigious Chinese Literature Media Prize (华语文学传媒大奖 最佳新人奖). Yan Ge (Chinese: 颜歌; born 1984) is the pen name of Chinese writer Dai Yuexing (戴月行).

But none of these matter to us,” Six Times continued. “When poets come into the room we simply chomp on the fictional dish you’ve created. We eat up the food and shit it out later. And the shit is poetry.” There is an impressive range to the nine stories in her collection. Settings vary from contemporary New York, London, Sweden, Dublin, China in the aftermath of the 2008 earthquake, or that country centuries earlier, amid power games and political machinations at court and among the disciples of Confucius. It’s a lot of material for a relatively short number of stories but for the most part Ge handles the shifts skilfully, with nimble changes in tone, pace and style that reflect the broad scope of her stories. Only the similarities that I could find throughout and crossing all the stories are the themes which champion art and literature specifically in writing as most of the characters were authors, writers and poets, and they also discussed certain book titles and poems; discuss displacement and self-identities as the characters all discussed their dispositions and individualities; as well as the position of language in determining one’s true meaning and deliverance. A recommended read if you are into something that is stimulating, provocative, intriguing and “meaty” (no pun intended, but you would understand especially if you would have read the last story in this compilation 😅). Elsewhere” by Yan Ge is a collection of stories that captivates readers with its jangly and eclectic narratives. The book explores the relationship between language and understanding, showcasing the power of words to evoke emotions and experiences beyond comprehension. With its cosmopolitan settings and visceral quality, “Elsewhere” pushes the boundaries of storytelling and establishes Yan Ge as a talented and versatile writer.

This subtle but brilliant collection will draw readers in and keep them enchanted until the very last word." — BooklistSmall Bamboo sat down in the armchair. “Bloody hell,” he said, slapping his thigh. “This is a palace.” Young Li and Six Times walked in, carrying a square table. They put it down and flipped up four curved extensions. An enormous round table emerged. The atmosphere of Strange Beasts of China is delightful. Through the narrator’s futile quest to catalog beasts, Yan captures the fluidness of city life, the way urban space defies definition even for people hellbent on making sense of it." The visceral quality of the stories in “Elsewhere” is another notable aspect. Characters often find themselves in states of discomfort, with instances of vomiting and references to eating meat taking on a horrifying resonance. This adds intensity to the narratives, allowing readers to vividly experience the physical and emotional struggles faced by the characters. Precise, surreal and emotionally devastating —the stories in Elsewhere leap between continents and centuries with a fierceness and confidence that makes their abiding loneliness and sense of longing all the more affecting." —Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days

He was the only non-American in this circle [of] a reading/writing group – a bunch of expats, and me and some other locals,” she recalls. “And he really stood out because he looked so miserable! And that was really good for me – the others were too happy, I couldn’t emotionally engage with them.” You prawns!” Young Li puffed out a mouthful of smoke. “Can we talk about something else★ Haven’t we had enough of dead people★” Jangly and eclectic... These stories map out the distance between the head and the gut —the way language can fail to convey the deepest, most visceral facts of life." — The Guardian Yan Ge commented: ‘I have been writing in Chinese for eighteen years, and it took me a long time searching to find my voice in a new literary language. The stories in Elsewhere include a polyphony of voices, anti-dualistic propositions and characters whose identities are constantly in flux – this sense of perpetual displacement is what I want to continue to explore and celebrate in my fiction.

Table of Contents

She looked around the table. “How about the soup★ I can get you some soup without offal,” she said.

I was a little more impressed with ‘Free Wandering’ and ‘How I Fell in Love with the Well-Documented Life of Alex Wheelan’ in that I appreciated what both were trying to do a lot more. ‘Free Wandering’ had some clarity issues, but was a much more interesting story and the strange, distant characters went well with Yan Ge’s sparse and slightly odd style. ‘[…] Alex Wheelan’ was an interesting idea but was a tough one to execute, given its thoroughly modern subject matter, and it veered a little too much into the cringe for it to be entirely successful for me. Publishing Director Angus Cargill has bought UK & Commonwealth rights to a collection of short stories and a novel by Yan Ge from Matt Turner at RCW in an exclusive submission. North American rights were then pre-empted by Rebekah Jett at Scribner. The women there have strong and slender fingers. The perfect kind of fingers for plunging into the goose’s asshole and yanking out the entrails while it’s still alive. They do it with precision and determination. They do this in a flash to preserve its tenderness.” Ge’s stories in English have been published in a variety of places, including this newspaper, The Stinging Fly, and Lucy Caldwell’s anthology Being Various.the stories are bold and experimental. It achieves a perfect balance of western and eastern culture, mixing the two perfectly. And it’s this affinity with the periphery that is brought to life in Yan Ge’s short story collection Elsewhere. An English-speaking woman at a Chengdu pub, a foreigner they call her, asks Pigeon how it feels to be a Chinese woman. She doesn’t answer but later tells her mother about the exchange, asking for her personal interpretation. The mother reflects a moment before saying that she supposes she never saw herself as a Chinese woman. She can only tell Pigeon how she feels about being a woman. This simple exchange encapsulates an important counterpoint of this short story collection, which highlights a pervasive tendency to stratification based on superficial cues of somethingness. Even Pigeon does this. She lashes out at a bartender for speaking in Chinese because, she says, it is her language not his. Through the eyes of protagonist Li Jiaqi, readers are transported to the fictional town of Shuanglang, where they witness the impact of social and economic transformations on ordinary lives. Ge’s vivid descriptions of the picturesque landscapes of Yunnan Province bring the setting to life, immersing readers in a world that straddles the boundaries of time and place.