The Dog

(Paperback)

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Description

One of the most highly acclaimed US debuts in recent years- lauded by The New York Times and compared to Chekhov, Joyce, Cheever and Carver 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 Mongolian 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.

Reviews

Stunning. The Dog bristles with prickly details and barbed observations . . . An incisive - and highly impressive - debut * New York Times *
A book of extraordinary power * The Guardian *
Livings's magnificent debut collection of short stories, The Dog, all set in contemporary, or near-contemporary China, satisfies that basic readerly urge, pitched somewhere between escapism and anthropological curiosity, to be transported. * The Independent *

Livings writes so simply, and so well . . . These stories are sneaky, almost subliminal, in their ambitions and connections

* Kirkus Reviews *
What gives these stories their dark, upsetting grandeur is in every case the luminosity of hope, no matter how fragile, how vulnerable, how very nearly extinguished -- Paul Harding, 2010 Pulitzer Prize winning author of 'Tinkers'
A brilliant and promising debut. With its tales of volatile protagonists struggling to survive in contemporary China, The Dog should attract widespread attention and praise . . . Any unfamiliarity with the Chinese locales and culture is quickly eased by Livings's imaginative yet realistic scenarios and vividly drawn characters * Booklist *
Already causing excitement in America, Jack Livings's remarkable The Dog is an impressive clutch of stories showing post-Mao China * Sunday Times *
A socially complex and pitch-perfect account of modernization's grueling aftermath * Publishers Weekly *
A captivating read * The Lady *
Livings has a keen eye for details and a knack for dialogue * The Spectator *
Touching and humane * Financial Times *

Author Bio

Jack Livings's stories have appeared in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, Tin House and Best American Short Stories, and have been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. Livings received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He lives in New York.