The Invisible Valley
a novel
Published on 3. April 2018
400 pages
978-1-61873-146-3 (ISBN)
Description
Lu Beiping is one of 20 million young adults the Chinese government uproots and sends far from their homes for agricultural re-education. And Lu is bored and exhausted. While he pines for romance, instead he's caught up in a forbidden religious tradition and married off to the foreman's long-dead daughter so that her soul may rest. The foreman then sends him off to cattle duty up on Mudkettle Mountain, far away from everyone else.
On the mountain, Lu meets an outcast polyamorous family led by a matriarch, Jade, and one of her lovers, Kingfisher. They are woodcutters and practice their own idiosyncratic faith by which they claim to placate the serpent-demon sleeping in the belly of the mountains. Just as the village authorities get wind of Lu's dalliances with the woodcutters, a typhoon rips through the valley. And deep in the jungle, a giant serpent may be stirring.
The Invisible Valley is a lyrical fable about the shapes into which human affection can be pressed in extreme circumstances; about what is natural and what is truly deviant; about the relationships between the human and the natural, the human and the divine, the self and the other.
On the mountain, Lu meets an outcast polyamorous family led by a matriarch, Jade, and one of her lovers, Kingfisher. They are woodcutters and practice their own idiosyncratic faith by which they claim to placate the serpent-demon sleeping in the belly of the mountains. Just as the village authorities get wind of Lu's dalliances with the woodcutters, a typhoon rips through the valley. And deep in the jungle, a giant serpent may be stirring.
The Invisible Valley is a lyrical fable about the shapes into which human affection can be pressed in extreme circumstances; about what is natural and what is truly deviant; about the relationships between the human and the natural, the human and the divine, the self and the other.
More details
Persons
An acclaimed Chinese essayist and novelist, Su Wei spent ten years working on a rubber plantation during the Cultural Revolution, and afterward was among the first mainland Chinese students to pursue an advanced degree in the United States. He returned to China and played a key role as a leading intellectual in the Tiananmen Square student protests of 1989, was blacklisted by the Chinese government, and eventually fled to the U.S., where he has been a lecturer at Yale University since 1997. He has published three novels and several books of short stories and personal essays in Chinese.
Austin Woerner is a Chinese-English literary translator. His works include two volumes of poetry, Doubled Shadows: Selected Poetry of Ouyang Jianghe and Phoenix, and a novel, The Invisible Valley by Su Wei. He served as English translation editor for the innovative Chinese literary journal Chutzpah!, and co-edited the short fiction anthology Chutzpah!: New Voices from China. He holds a BA in East Asian Studies from Yale and an MFA in creative writing from the New School.
Austin Woerner is a Chinese-English literary translator. His works include two volumes of poetry, Doubled Shadows: Selected Poetry of Ouyang Jianghe and Phoenix, and a novel, The Invisible Valley by Su Wei. He served as English translation editor for the innovative Chinese literary journal Chutzpah!, and co-edited the short fiction anthology Chutzpah!: New Voices from China. He holds a BA in East Asian Studies from Yale and an MFA in creative writing from the New School.
Content
- Intro
- Chapter 1
- Ghost Bride
- Chapter 2
- Smoke on the Mountains
- Chapter 3
- "Pa"
- Chapter 4
- At the Water's Edge
- Chapter 5
- The Haunted Grove
- Chapter 6
- The Hollow
- Chapter 7
- The Flood
- Chapter 8
- The Ancient Tablet
- Chapter 9
- Amaranthine Rosewood
- Chapter 10
- Cockfight
- Chapter 11
- Torches
- Chapter 12
- Spirit Flight
- Chapter 13
- Night Music
- Chapter 14
- Snakeclouds
- Translator's Acknowledgments
- About the Author
