Land Of Big Numbers

Stories

By: Te-Ping Chen

Narrated by: Eddy Lee, Fiona Rene, Matt Yang King, Christine Lakin, Katie Tang, Chris Naoki Lee, Lynn Chen

A Best Book of the Year: Barack Obama · NPR · The Washington Post · The Philadelphia Inquirer · Esquire · Kirkus Reviews · Chicago Public Library · Electric Literature

Malala Yousafzai’s Fearless Book Club Pick for Literati

""Dazzling...Riveting."" —New York Times Book Review

“Gripping and illuminating . . . At the heart of Te-Ping Chen’s remarkable debut lies a question all too relevant in 21st Century America: What is freedom?” —Jennifer Egan

“Immensely rewarding, from the first sentence to the last . . . An exceptional collection.” —Charles Yu

A “stirring and brilliant” debut story collection, offering vivid portrayals of the men and women of modern China and its diaspora, “both love letter and sharp social criticism,” from a phenomenal new literary talent bringing great “insight from her years as a reporter with the Wall Street Journal” (Elle).

Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers traces the journeys of the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily, violently, but still beautifully—into the present.

Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations of China’s volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped for no reason, on a subway platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave.

With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable cultural critic and an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice.

Wow!

This is a book I will read again, and again! And think about in between

Modern Chinese Parables

Very enjoyable listen with emotive performances by a small cast of readers. I think I learned something about China from each short story in an indirect way. It’s relatable.

Good stuff

Interesting perspectives, mostly good stories. Each one is an hour.

Don’t read this book if you want everything tied up in a bow with answers (as far as plots/characters go).

Delightful surprises!

I seldom read fiction, but I was told that I might find this book of special interest. That recommendation was spot on! Every story was different with its own special twist.

great collections.

I really enjoyed these short stories. The readers were good. I feel like this gave me better insight into the Chinese experience, specifically leave the phenomenally large numbers and varieties of experiences.