Shi Cheng: Short Stories from Urban China, ed. by Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu and Ra Page, Comma Press

Ten utterly distinguished Chinese writers have penned a short story each, with the city of their choice serving as backdrop. From Cao Kou's tale of a country bumpkin stumbling along in the de-humanized industrial town of Guangzhou, to Zhu Wen's south-China-boy's adventures in seemingly cryogenically-frozen Harbin to Diao Dou’s dystopic vision of people being made to squat after 8 pm in an imaginary law-and-order crazy Shenyang - the stories urge readers to look on these popular Chinese destinations in a whole new light.