City Like Water: A Novel | 謝曉虹 Dorothy Tse

“A rewarding exploration of change and loss.”―Publishers Weekly



“City Like Water is a synecdoche for wider realms of social and political unrest. . . . Bruce’s perfect translation dilates in the dank horror of Tse’s fictionalized Hong Kong, amplifying her tricks of syntax and pace and rhythm, and her latent notes of resistance.”―Michelle Chan Schmidt, Words Without Borders



“As the world itself becomes more surreal, narratives like this bring a particular sense of recognition, an aha moment that gestures toward the irrational, disquieting, insidious forces that determine our very lives.”―Amanda Norton, Newcity Lit



“Now is a good time for a City Like Water.”―Angus Stewart, Asian Review of Books



“In Bruce’s dizzy, delightful translation, Tse summons a world that magnifies and probes the seam between dark dream and heart-rending reality.”―Polly Barton



“How to describe a city when its very existence is at odds with a dominant narrative? In City Like Water, Dorothy Tse suggests the status of corroded reality with strange (and estranged) citizens, seductive illogic, and bizarre meals of haunted lotus roots and rice. In shimmering prose―gorgeously rendered by Natascha Bruce―Tse evokes the disquieting collision of revolt, nostalgia, and desire.”―Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time



“Gritty and fragile at the same time, City Like Water addresses a central horror of our times: the overtaking of our cities and people by the powerful. It does so without surrendering to the tamed version of reality, but by renaming the fear and reenvisioning resistance. That is exactly what poetic lucidity is supposed to do.”―Yuri Herrera, author of Season of the Swamp



“To be ushered into Tse’s hallucinatory city is a revelation, an unnerving gift.”―China Miéville, author of The Book of Elsewhere



“The seductive beauty of Tse’s writing has won her awards, and is perceptively captured by Natascha Bruce. . . . Dazzling imagery carries the narrative―and the city itself―far out to sea, as Kafka and Borges, old masters of the surreal and avuncular figures, look on approvingly from the shore.”―Lee Langley, The Spectator [UK]



“Herein lies the answer to how one writes about and makes sense of a city where free speech is being curtailed, and where overtly political statements can be seen as conspiring to subvert state power. Tse’s surrealism is an act of imaginative defiance, a tactical reframing of reality itself, and a way of speaking the unspeakable when direct articulation is no longer safe.”―Sharon Chau, Oxford Review of Books

Dorothy Tse is a Hong Konger writer and the author of Owlish, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, and Snow and Shadow, which was long-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She has received the Hong Kong Book Prize, the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature, and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award. She is the cofounder of the literary journal Fleurs des Lettres.



Natascha Bruce translates fiction from Chinese. Her recent work includes Owlish by Dorothy Tse, Mystery Train by Can Xue, and Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong. After several years in Hong Kong, she now lives in Amsterdam.Dorothy Tse is a Hong Konger writer and the author of Owlish, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, and Snow and Shadow, which was long-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She has received the Hong Kong Book Prize, the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature, and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award. She is the cofounder of the literary journal Fleurs des Lettres.



Natascha Bruce translates fiction from Chinese. Her recent work includes Owlish by Dorothy Tse, Mystery Train by Can Xue, and Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong. After several years in Hong Kong, she now lives in Amsterdam.