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Night Train

by Xu Zechen

Translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang

$19.00

Additional Info

ISBN: 9781949641981
Size: 5" x 8"
Pages: 290
Publication Date: May 12, 2026
Distributed By: Publishers Group West

Looking to take a vacation before settling in for to his PHD studies and hoping to swindle a little traveling money from his father, Chen Munian made up a story about killing someone and needing to flee. But now that lie has taken on a life of its own and everyone—the university, the police, the sprawling campus community—is convinced he’s murderer.

Munian is barely holding on: his wages are meager, he lives with a group of chaotic roommates, he drinks too much with his crazy artist neighbor who is obsessed with Van Gogh, and his bumbling attempts to woo the beautiful Qin Ke always end in heartache. His life keeps spiraling out of his control, and he can’t help but wonder if he was destined to be a murderer all along.

Xu Zechen’s Night Train, in Jeremy Tiang’s brash translation, follows characters who live on the precipice, where the foolish mistakes of young men can have devastating consequences.

Praise

“Like my favorite fiction, these stories subtly pierce through ordinary life’s pitfalls to reveal something dreamlike and mythological lurking below. Another gem of a translation from a writer who fascinates me.”—Fernando A. Flores, author of Brother Brontë

“[Zechen’s] silent toiling has given voice to the equally silent social classes struggling on the boundaries of the country’s urban landscape.—China Daily

“[Against] the Chinese government’s emphasis on innovation and overwork…the protagonists of Beijing Sprawl aren’t running to get ahead; they’re running so they don’t go insane. And, significantly, no matter where the narrator jogs, he always ends up back where he began….Instead of allegorizing success, Xu uses running as a metaphor for long-term precarity.”—Charlie Markbreiter, 4Columns

“Xu Zechen’s tales of Beijing and the lives on its margins have a relationship to that city much like the one Irvine Welsh’s fiction has to Edinburgh—writing that’s at once an evocation and a demystification of the city where it’s set.”—Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders

Author

Xu Zechen is the author of the novels Midnight’s Door, Night Train, Heaven on Earth, and Running Through Beijing (Two Lines Press, 2014). He was selected by People’s Literature as one of the “Future 20” best Chinese writers under forty-one. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, he lives in Beijing.

Translator

Jeremy Tiang is a novelist, playwright and Sinophone translator. Recent translations include Liu Xinwu’s The Wedding Party, which was shortlisted for the National Translation Award, as well as novels by Zhang Yueran, Shuang Xuetao, Lo Yi-Chin, Yan Ge and Yeng Pway Ngon. Their novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. Earlier this year they were the Princeton University Translator-in-Residence, and served on the jury of the International Booker Prize. Originally from Singapore, they live in Flushing, Queens.