RaveThe Times Literary SupplementI cannot imagine a reader who will not find in this anthology a new writer to love. Many genres are represented: fiction, of course, by authors ranging from Mavis Gallant to Qiu Miaojin, and also travel writing (Patrick Leigh Fermor in Greece), drama (Euripides translated by Anne Carson), memoir (Eve Babitz in Hollywood), song (Kabir, a North Indian devotional poet), even an interview (Jessica Mitford, visiting the African American activist George Jackson in San Quentin prison). The selection is extremely diverse, and the book benefits from being read slowly, one piece at a time. Each author has such a distinctive voice that moving immediately from one to the next produces a shock ... In China, explains Frank, the red thread \'is said to be a metaphor for a binding tie that exists between people unknown to each other\'. The anthology introduces to adventurous readers a set of writers who were never known to each other, never part of the same communities or traditions. And in this way it constructs a tradition of its own.
