Five Spice Street
Can XueSome think X is 50 years old; others that she is 22. Some believe she has occult powers and has thereby enslaved the young men of the street; others think she is a clever trickster playing mind games with the common people. Who is Madam X? How has she brought the good people of Five Spice Street to their knees either in worship or in exasperation? The unknown narrator takes no sides in the endless interplay of visions, arguments, & opinions. The investigation rages, as the street becomes a Walpurgisnacht of speculations, fantasies, and prejudices. Madam X is a vehicle whereby the people bare their souls, through whom they reveal themselves even as they try to penetrate the mystery of her extraordinary powers.
Five Spice Street is one of the most astonishing novels of the past twenty years. Exploring the collective consciousness of this little street of ordinary people, Can Xue penetrates the deepest existential anxieties of the present day—whether in China or in the West—where the inevitable impermanence of identity struggles with the narrative within which identity must compose itself.
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Can Xue is the pseudonym of the renowned avant‑garde author Deng Xiaohua. Can Xue was longlisted for the 2019 Booker International Prize for Love in the New Millennium, translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen. Can Xue’s other work includes Five Spice Street, Vertical Motion, The Last Lover, Frontier, & I Live in the Slums.