The Speculators & Other Short Stories: A Most Excellent Collection of Supernatural Tales in Chinese Magical Realism
About this audiobook
What happens when the supernatural intrudes on the ordinary, and the magical is entwined with the everyday – in this age of TikTok, stock market pumps & dumps, livestreaming, night shifts, and PSLE exams?
Twelve stories. Twelve cities. Twelve encounters with the strange.
In these twelve supernatural tales set in the modern-day cities of mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, we bring you, the reader, on a modern rendition of Chinese magical realism, where barters are made, lessons are taught, dreams are found, business agreements are struck, and justice is served.
Rooted in the rich storytelling tradition of Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, this debut collection transplants classical Chinese magical realism into the neon-lit, app-mediated, rent-stressed world of contemporary Asia.
Among the highlights:
§ In The Speculators: A young professional chasing his dream job at a hedge fund finds an unlikely and unsettling benefactor.
§ In Secrets of the Deep: Everyone wants to know, exactly how did Sister Li make her fortune?
§ In Master of the Heist: An undercover cop thinks he'd seen it all, until a mission of the type he has never come across.
§ In Night Ride: A taxi driver in Hong Kong finds out a dark secret from his passenger.
§ In Preferred Vendor: A barbecue shop owner gets an order of a very special kind.
§ In Detention: An heir in Taipei gets a lesson he never had growing up.
§ In Boy-Boy & Girl-Girl: A pair of twins in Singapore find extra help in the stressful lead-up to their PSLE exams.
The uncanny does not announce itself here. In this stories collection, we find that the paranormal and the mundane often exist on the same plane, in the space defined by both tradition and modernity. Justice is served – though not always by the expected hand. Love is offered – though not always by the person in mind.
Atmospheric, penetratingly insightful on modern society, and shot through with fascinating secrets and rich detail, these stories ask what we carry with us across time, across places, across the thin border between the world we can see and the one we cannot.
For explorers of modern Chinese society & that of the Chinese diaspora, and for anyone who has ever felt that a world – just at the edge of perception – was out there.
