Beijing Sprawl

Muyu, a seventeen-year-old from a small village, came to Beijing for his piece of the dream: money, love, a good life. But in the city, daily life for him and his friendspurveyors of fake IDs and counterfeit papersis a precarious balance of struggle and guile. Surveying the neighborhood from the rooftop of the apartment they all share, the young men play cards, drink beer, and discuss their aspirations, hoping for the best but expecting little more than the comfort of each other's company. In these connected stories translated from Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen and Jeremy Tiang, Xu's characters observe as others like themworkers, students, drifters, and the just plain unluckyget by the best ways they know how: by jogging excessively, herding pigeons, building cars from scraps, and holding their friends close through the miasma of so-called progress.

Dettagli