Original title:
哀悼乳房
Original language:
Complex Chinese
Publication info:
Hung-Fan Bookstore
1 August 1992
332 pages
Genre:
Narrative non-fiction
Rights handled by New River:
Foreign rights excl. China
Rights sold:
WEL (NYRB)
Mourning a Breast
by Xi Xi
WEL rights just sold to NYRB Classics!
A Chinese language modern classic written by renowned Hong Kong author Xi Xi, Mourning a Breast is the first Chinese language book to expose myths associated with breast cancer, and to cast off the stigma of writing about illness.
Told from a first-person perspective, the book opens with the narrator putting aside her swimsuit. She loves swimming, having fun eavesdropping other regulars' conversations, and enjoys shopping for swimsuits. So begins this personal account of the author's journey of going through breast cancer. Experimenting different genres, the book not only explores the author's physical and psychological reactions to cancer, but also offers an intimate look into Hong Kong as a city: its hospitals, streets, people, and its dailiness, in the late eighties, a city different from what it is today. Agnès Varda's playful style meets Annie Ernaux's The Years. Mourning a Breast, and Xi Xi's oeuvre in general, is a hidden gem that deserves a wider audience.
About the author
Xi Xi was born in Shanghai in 1937 and moved to Hong Kong in 1950. She is one of the most acclaimed writers in the Sinophone world. Hailed by critics and readers as a major and unique voice in global Sinophone literature and a stylistic innovator across genres, she has published more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Her most known books include: Mourning a Breast, My City, A Woman Like Me, not written words. Xi Xi is the winner of the sixth Newman Prize for Chinese Literature in 2019.
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(German rights to Suhrkamp)