Keynote
A potent and disorienting new book by the author of Owlish, a National Book Critics Circle prize finalist
Book Title
City Like Water
Subtitle
A Novel
Cover Image
“With shimmering prose—gorgeously rendered by Natascha Bruce—Tse evokes the disquieting collision of revolt, nostalgia, and desire.”—Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time
Body
Your city is gone, as if sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So much has vanished with it—counterfeit watches, streets echoing with the sound of stilettos, and even some of your classmates and teachers. Your mother joins in a housewives’ protest, each woman waving the fake, bloody lotus roots they were sold until they’re turned into statues. Then it’s just you and your father at home. But soon he is absorbed into the enormous TV gifted by the government, and you can only see him in the background of soap operas. And didn’t you once have a little sister? When the police go undercover and transform your neighborhood into a violent labyrinth, where does it all leave you? Lucid, nightmarish, and indelible, City Like Water is a wondrous tale of a city not so different from your own.
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About the Author
Praise
“Gritty and fragile at the same time, City Like Water addresses a central horror of our times: the overtaking of our cities and people by the powerful. It does so without surrendering to the tamed version of reality, but by renaming the fear and reenvisioning resistance. That is exactly what poetic lucidity is supposed to do.”—Yuri Herrera, author of Season of the Swamp
