© Columbia University Press
Loud Sparrows: Contemporary Chinese Short-Shorts
Paper, 272 pages, 34 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-13849-9
$25.00
/ £17.50
October, 2006
Cloth, 272 pages, 34 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-13848-2
$75.00
/ £52.00
"Beautiful and thought-provoking." — Los Angeles Times
"The pieces are varied, lively, often charming, and occasionally brilliant." — Perry Link, New York Review of Books
"It's well worth dipping into (repeatedly)." — The Complete Review
"Beautiful and thought-provoking... A breeze of aesthetic freedom flows through all of them, making them fun to read." — Susan Salter, Los Angeles Times
"Funny, touching, intriguing and sometimes very beautifully... They are tiny vignettes of Chinese life in all its entire chaotic splendour." — Jenny Niven, Time Out Beijing
"Loud Sparrows is a delightful collection of short-shorts." — Steve Noyes, The Vancouver Sun
"This volume runs the gamut of human emotions and situations, not to mention styles of expression and modes of representation. Some short-shorts are long on dialogue and are witty and light; others are brooding and haunting, revealing the dimensions of their subjects through in-depth narrative and description. What they all have in common is that they crystallize some important human moment, leaving the reader with a brief but resonant impression." — Christopher Lupke, Washington State University
"Loud Sparrows, with its balanced treatment of short-shorts from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and its inclusion of works by well-known fiction writers, offers a major step forward in a largely untouched field of Chinese literature available in translation. It shows off short-shorts at their finest-carefully crafted works that take advantage of the challenge of the tight space limitations inherent to the genre." — Steven L. Riep, Brigham Young University