PositiveWorld Literature Today... dreamily surreal ... Quebecois author Christiane Vadnais takes the middle road in Fauna, delicately tracing the decline of humanity’s dominion over nature ... While the stories in the first half of the book are uncertain and seem to have little relation to one another, those in the latter half are much more confident, tangible, and even, at times, inspired. Vadnais’s portrait of a world reshaping people in its own image may not be particularly unique, but it has an ethereal quality all its own.
TransKen Liu
RaveWorld Literature Today... even readers who have encountered some of these stories before will be excited to see them once again, this time shoulder-to-shoulder with newly translated and brilliant stories ... The lovely and richly imagined \'Under a Dangling Sky\' and \'The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales\' (Fei Dao) brilliantly mix magical realism and science fiction to create a new kind of evocative subgenre. And then there’s Chen Qiufan’s superbly written and intense story \'A History of Future Illnesses,\' which chronicles imaginary future ailments caused by excessive use of technology ... Qiufan’s story deftly jumps from one disease to another like a doctor writing clinical narratives of patients with whom he’s quite familiar. Qiufan’s bold, elastic narrative style is endlessly engaging. Without Ken Liu’s translations, let’s remember, us anglophone readers wouldn’t have these stories in the first place. Broken Stars, like Invisible Planets before it, is indeed a praiseworthy accomplishment and a gift for all readers.
Ahmed Saadawi, Trans. by Jonathan Wright
RaveWorld Literature Today\"...as with any great literary work, this novel doesn’t just tell a story. Rather, it unfolds across multiple dimensions, each layer peeling back to reveal something new: the structure of the novel itself (stories within stories, references to the \'author\' as a character); buildings that, when damaged by bombs, reveal archaeological treasures; and identities that turn out merely to be covers for other (perhaps still false) identities. Exquisitely translated by Jonathan Wright, this novel breaks through the superficial news stories and helps us see more clearly what the American invasion has wrought, how violence begets violence, and how tenuous is the line between innocence and guilt. Brilliant and horrifying, Frankenstein in Baghdad is essential reading.\
