Lauded by Susan Sontag as the Chinese author most deserving of the Nobel Prize,
Can Xue is a notorious autodidact, steeped in the works of Borges, Kafka, and Calvino.
Can xue, a pseudonym, means “stubborn snow” – urban slush that refuses to melt, or the pure-white caps of mountain peaks. As a writer, Can Xue is both: grounded and exalted by a commitment to experimentation. Her formal education ended at 13 when her father was interned in a labour camp during the Cultural Revolution, after which she became a factory worker and then a tailor. At 30, she took up writing and developed the technique for which she’s famous: treating each story as a performance, like a dance staged from beginning to end, she writes for an hour every day with no editing permitted.