Zhu Wen's What Is Love and What Is Garbage

We’re planning to post a review of Zhu Wen’s short story collection I Love Dollars (first published by Columbia University Press and now available in paperback from Penguin) in the very near future, but in the meantime, Paper Republic has an excerpt from his first novel. I’ll let translator Cindy Carter set the scene:

In the following excerpt, from the first chapter of What is Love and What is Garbage, we meet protagonist Xiao Ding on what well may be the worst day of his life: the weather outside is sweltering, he is drinking alone in a darkened bar at noon, the knife scar on his belly is starting to itch, and he desperately needs to take a shit.

Pretty funny excerpt . . . hopefully this novel will be coming out in English in the near future.