A Submarine in the Night: Stories

By: Chen, Chuncheng

From an award-winning author, wildly inventive stories about the invisible forces that shape our lives

External pressures abound in modern-day life: familial expectations, the homogenizing forces of work and society, unyielding political realities. But the characters in Chen Chuncheng's eerily unsettling stories find ways to slide into a secret world, one where reality and imagination become blurred. A submarine that explores the depths of the ocean in the dreams of a small boy turns out to rescue people in real life; an older writer in a rut makes a diabolical bargain with a voice from the heavens; and a young man attempts to trim clouds to neat shapes as part of a strange initiative designed to please government inspectors.

Twisting and turning in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, A Submarine in the Night probes whether imagination serves as a potent healing force or a dangerous escape hatch from feelings of loneliness and alienation. From one of the most blazingly original new writers in global literature, these stories ask profound and startling questions about the bargains we make to preserve an inner world.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0593718267
• ISBN13: 9780593718261
• Release Date: July 2027
• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"