Jack Livings

This book is the winner of the 2015 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Set in the shifting landscape of contemporary China, Jack Living's debut story collection, The Dog, explodes the country's cultural and social fault lines. In this riveting, richly imagined collection of stories, a wealthy factory owner - once a rural peasant - refuses to help the victims of an earthquake until his daughter starts a relief effort of her own; a powerful Uyghur gangster clashes with his homosexual grandson; and a man struggles to undertake a physically impossible task - constructing a giant crystal sarcophagus for the dead leader. With spare, penetrating prose, Livings gives shape to the anonymous faces in the crowd and illuminates the tensions, ironies, and possibilities of life in modern China. As heartbreaking as it is hopeful, The Dog marks the debut of a startling and wildly imaginative new voice in fiction.