Strange Beast of China

A New York Times Notable Books of 2021 | Washington Post's BEST Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror 2021 |  Runner-up for the 2021 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation | WINNER of an English PEN translate Award.

In the city of Yongan, a fiction writer and amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures, with their greenish stomachs or gills or strange birthmarks, live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness, some with ancient forbears, others engineered as artificial breeds. Guided and often misguided by her elusive university professor and his scrappy sidekick-student Zhong Liang, our narrator finds herself on a mission to track down each species. And as she blunders from one implausible situation to the next, she comes one step closer to revealing her own multifaceted beastliness Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China addresses existential questions of identity, being, love and morality with whimsy and grace.

‘Luminous and beguiling…  Strange Beasts transfixes you like a vivid dream, offering glimpses of the waking world contorted into uncanny forms.’ -- The Washington Post

‘Magical realism of the best kind, where the spectacular is paired with just enough irony and daffy humor to keep it grounded on earth—or whichever world this fun and beguiling book takes place.’ -- Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

‘Delightful. Through the narrator’s futile quest to catalog beasts, Yan captures the fluidness of city life, the way urban space defies definition even for people hellbent on making sense of it.’ -- The New York Times