Inner China

Book excerpt: Fiction. Translated from the Swedish by Jennifer Hayashida. INNER CHINA is the first of Eva Sjödin's books to be translated into English. It is the poetic narrative of a young girl navigating a tenuous yet vibrant landscape of hardship and neglect, resilience and self-reliance. "By turns catastrophic and luminous, INNER CHINA, in Jennifer Hayashida's translation, is unflinching in its gaze, economical in its language, and fearless as it enters the difficult terrain that is childhood. Here the interior and exterior worlds, the magical and the mundane collide--brutally and beautifully."--Genya Turovskaya "In Eva Sjödin's INNER CHINA, the imaginative life born of the desire for heaven, for somewhere else, is the starkest reminder that we reside not there, but here: on earth. While 'heaven and dirt cave in, twist together,' the young narrator makes a life and language of the fertile and porous nature beyond her cold realities, an emotional world marked by decay and resilience. This tale is then, also, a map of the human psyche as it maneuvers around that which threatens its body."--E. Tracy Grinnell "INNER CHINA, the first of Sjödin's works to be translated into English, consists of a series of poems that form a narrative about a young girl dealing with hard times and being neglected; by relying on herself and never giving up, she embarks on a moving journey of self-discovery."--Translation Review