Zero and Other Fictions

#962
Title: Zero and Other Fictions
Author: Fan Huang
Translator: John Balcom
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Year: 2011
152 pages

Taiwan. The fault may be in the translation, or I may not be sufficiently immersed in Taiwanese culture from 1980 to the present, but this collection struck me as fairly forgettable, though my understanding is that many of this author's works have been significant departures from Taiwanese standards. The best story of the four was "How to Measure the Width of a Ditch," which uses memories of historical, cultural, and personal artifacts as a way to talk about the melancholic aspects of progress and aging. Would that the rest of the collection were as strong.