XU XI 許 素 細

Conversation with poet James Sherry about both our new books in Critical Flame Issue 73, December 2022

Read the review by Patrick Thomas Henry in the Michigan Quarterly Review (December 16, 2022)

Conversation curated by Kristina Marie Darling in Tupelo Quarterly, December 14, 2022 

Other writers say:

In this relentlessly inventive collection, Xu Xi gives us an in-between Hong Kong, culturally hybrid and casually polyglot . . . (her)"speculations" weave between fact and fiction, from personal essay to short story, memoir to satire, as elusive and allusive as her playful, slippery sentences. Xu has been instrumental in carving out the space for global Asian voices on the world literary stage, and this book is a work of true -- to borrow Xu's term -- "transnational patriotism." Antony Dapiran, author of City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong

Don't let the humor and playfulness of this genre bending work fool you. The real mission is to keenly and incisively peel back the layers of absurdity and illusion and reveal our hubris

. . . a brilliant work by a contemporary master of form. —Hasanthika Sirisena, author of Dark Tourist, The Other One 

Read this marvellous collection by Xu Xi, genre-defying essays and fiction that are truly writing without borders . . . Her literary references range across Hesiod and Ding Ling and Jonathan Swift. The elegance of her language is  breath-taking . . . I couldn't put this book down, and when I was finished I started to read it again. Kim Echlin, Canada, author of Speak Silence, Under the Visible Life, The Disappeared

To know Hong Kong—or even to be curious about the city and its people—is to love Xu Xi's work. Monkey in Residence is a brilliant blend of fact and fiction that captures the conundrum that is modern Hong Kong: once British, now Chinese, still seeking its own identity and freedom. The diverse pieces in this collection—some dark, some funny, some poignant—paint a portrait of a writer who has had a long love affair with a city, despite its imperfections, and knows she will never quite be able to leave it behind. Xu Xi's tantalizing language, sprinkled with Chinese, is an absolute delight to read. Clifford Garstang, USA, author of What the Zhang Boys Know and The Shaman of Turtle Valley

Illuminating and moving . . . uniting family, belonging, travel, and the quest for transnational identity, this stunning hybrid collection reveals how people are shaped by the environments they inhabit. Aimee Parkison, USA, author of Suburban Death Project and Refrigerated Music for a Gleaming Woman

Keenly observed, richly textured, and often slyly humorous, Xu's aptly named speculations create space for childhood recollections of a vanishing Hong Kong to shimmer alongside her characters' lucidly imagined inner landscapes and her own surreal dispatches from the ever-shifting present.  Inez Tan, Singapore, author of This Is Where I Won't Be Alone

Unmasks the absurdities that have shaped Hong Kong as a disorienting space, and illuminates the profound ambivalence with which we embrace and resist the city.  Nicolette Wong, Writer-in-Residence, Dept of English, Chinese University of Hong Kong

A book above and beyond categories . . . she writes ’a way of being, of feeling that you can belong in your own skin, without compromise,’ — ideas important to us all.  Anna Sherman, England, author of The Bells of Old Tokyo

Continues to amaze and inspire . . . her prose is poetic, original, and at times, even funny.  This book is a must-read, one I won't forget.  Kim Chinquee Buffalo State University, Co-Director Writing Major 

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Recent podcast interview in “The Cultural Life of the Nobel Prize in Literature” series.