The most ambitious work of fiction by one of the world's greatest writers

"In this dreamlike novel . . . amid increasingly bizarre scenarios, appearances give way to hidden, otherworldly layers."--New Yorker

In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flower beds and conspiracies abound. Some try to flee--whether to a mysterious gambling bordello, underground ancestral homes, or Nest County, where traditional medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self.

Can Xue's mesmerizing storytelling traces love's many guises--satirical, tragic, transient, lasting, nebulous, and fulfilling--against a kaleidoscopic backdrop of commerce and industry, fraud and exploitation, and sex and romance drawn from the East and the West.