Full Description
Building 46 draws its reader into the darkest, quietest spaces of China's vast capital. Set just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, this queer coming-out-and-of-age story explores the interplay between so-called Eastern and Western superpowers, between humans and halls of power, and between light and dark. It is a love letter to Beijing. It is an expression of love for its intellectuals, its imams, its waitresses, its foreigners, its wanderers, its middle-aged moms, its shadow men, its DVD bootleggers, its migrant labourers. It is a love letter to a people very different to their mono-dimensional portrayals in foreign correspondence.
From the author of the award-winning and critically acclaimed nonfiction book When We Were Arabs comes a stunning, poetic fiction debut that aims to decentralise and destabilise the status quos of the anglophone book industry, to make room for a new and a fresh cannon of enthralling, delightful, and consciously political writing for an emerging and indignant generation of readers.
Contents
Contents
Prologue
1. Ping pong room
2. Starlight
3. A Prayer for Lost Things
4. Question Mark Man
5. In the Basement
6. The Humming
7. Best Foot Forward
8. Three's a crowd
9. Wanderlust
10. Dead end
11. Hide and seek
12. Bottom up
13. Down below
14. Cat and mouse
15. Heart of glass
16. Alleyway Man
17. Best wishes
Epilogue
