Go on a ride with Shuang Xuetao

The Chinese author has a knack of keeping readers off balance without devolving into nonsense, says his Singaporean translator Jeremy Tiang

- Clement Yong

The driver of a night ambulance rounds a bend at 140kmh with his eyes tight shut. An alien threatens genocide unless a lost sentence is recovered. Old envelopes literally terrorize a celebrity, forcing her to spew insults.

Chinese author Shuang Xuetao's collection of 11 short stories, Hunter, will leave readers grasping not just for the next page, but also for something solid to hold on to.

Each is a surreal exploration of an off-kilter world, the sands ever shifting within Shuang's dream logic. The reader relents control only to realize that the fantastical journey he or she is led on makes perfect sense. Few, however, would be able to say how they arrived where they are.

Such is Shuang's singular ability to coax readers on a ride, says his Singaporean translator Jeremy Tiang, who has brought Hunter, as well as a previous collection, Rouge Street: Three Novellas (2022), to English audiences.

Tiang, based in New York, met the Chinese "Dongbei" writer through Shuang's wife Zhang Yueran, whom Tiang also translates.

While back in Singapore during the Singapore International Festival of Arts, he says in an interview at a cafe in Waterloo Street: "The dominant quality of the language is it's very deadpan, but inflected at moments with surprise and startling metaphors.

"In terms of English genres, what Shuang is doing is maybe closest to slipstream. You are almost in reality, except this is completely conditional. He has a great knack of keeping you off balance without devolving into nonsense."