"There's a new world master among us, and her name is Can Xue."--Robert Coover

Two young girls sneak onto the grounds of a hospital, where they find a disturbing moment of silence in a rose garden. A couple grows a plant that blooms underground, invisibly, to their long-time neighbor's consternation. A cat worries about its sleepwalking owner, who receives a mysterious visitor while he's asleep. After a ten-year absence, a young man visits his uncle, on the twenty-fourth floor of a high-rise that is floating in the air, while his ugly cousin hesitates on the stairs . . .

Can...

Red Peonies: Two Novellas of China is the first translation in English of two of the books written by Zhang Yihe about women she met and befriended in prison. The subjects of her stories have been described as "beautiful women who wielded magic power over men. They were like jealous evil spirits, vengeful treacherous persons--countless snakes coiled around other people."

Zhang Yihe was fifteen in 1957, the year her father was declared an enemy of the People's Republic of China. Denounced as the nation's Number One Rightist, he was persecuted by Chairman Mao. Zhang herself was...