The first book in English by acclaimed Chinese-Canadian writer Xue Yiwei, Shenzheners is inspired by the young city of Shenzhen, a market town north of Hong Kong that became a Special Economic Zone in 1980 as an experiment in introducing capitalism to Communist China. A city in which everyone is a newcomer, Shenzhen has grown astronomically to become a major metropolitan centre. Hailed as a Chinese Dubliners, the original collection was named one of the Most Influential Chinese Books of the Year in 2013, with most of the stories appearing in Best Chinese Stories.

Xue Yiwei is an award-winning Chinese writer born in Chenzhou and raised in Changsha, in Hunan province. He has a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, an M.A. in English Literature from Université de Montréal, and a Ph. D. in Linguistics from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He has taught Chinese literature at Shenzhen University and is the author of sixteen books, including four novels—Desertion (1989, reissued 2012), Dr. Bethune’s Children (2011), Farewells from a Shadow (2013), and Empty Nest (2014)—and five collections of stories. He lives in Montreal.

Yiwei Xue's profile page

Darryl Sterk has been translating Mandarin-language fiction from Taiwan and occasionally from China for a dozen years, most notably Wu Ming-Yi's two novels The Man With the Compound Eyes (Harvill Secker, 2013) and The Stolen Bicycle (Text, 2017), which was longlisted for the Booker International. For Linda Leith Publishing, he has translated Xue Yiwei's Shenzheners (2016) and Dr. Bethune's Children (2017) and Home Sickness (LLP, 2020) by Chih Ying Lay. Originally from Edmonton, Darryl Sterk lives in Hong Kong.

Darryl Sterk's profile page

• Winner, Most influential Chinese book of the year. Shenzheners is the winner of the 2017 Blue Metropolis / Montreal Arts Council Prize for Literary Diversity.
• Winner, Most influential Chinese book of the year