Books: Xu Hongci, Roxane Gay, Han Kang and more

THE BIG STORY

Xu Hongci was born in China in 1933, when the country faced a series of tumultuous upheavals. He joined the Communist Party at 14, got engaged, began medical school in Shanghai and didn’t imagine that he’d fall afoul of Mao Tse-tung. But he was one of 550,000 people accused of being “rightist” and imprisoned in the Chinese gulag archipelago. He also managed to escape and make a new life — he’s thought to be the only person to do so. He wrote his memoir “No Wall Too High” in Mongolia; while it hasn’t been published in China, it’s being published in English for the first time with historical notes from translator Erling Ho. Richard Bernstein has our review.

SHORT STORIES

This week we have reviews of two collections of short fiction: Roxane Gay’s “Difficult Women” and “Him, Me, Muhammad Ali” by Randa Jarrar. Jarrar’s work is full of sharp and irreverent stories of Arab American women, sidestepping what reviewer Lorraine Ali calls the “flowery or sentimental” take on the immigrant experience. Gay, the author of the essay collection “Bad Feminist,” is experiencing a cultural moment, and our reviewer Anna James says her short fiction proves she’s here to stay.

Roxane Gay received PEN Center USA’s Freedom to Write Award in 2015. Her new short story collection is “Difficult Women.”

(Matt Sayles/Invision/Associated Press )

SLEIGHT OF PEN

With the publication of her new novel “Transit,” Rachel Cusk continues what she started in “Outline,” creating a fictional narrative about Faye, a novelist undergoing life changes quite like Cusk’s own. In “Transit,” the novelist Faye, post-divorce, returns to England, remodels an apartment and reboots her life. “Faye is as funny and moving and ruthlessly articulate as she is good at paying attention,” writes reviewer Laird Hunt.

BESTSELLERS

A fond farewell: In November, Carrie Fisher published “The Princess Diarist,” a memoir that contains her 40-year-old diaries from the filming of “Star Wars” — she was 19 and having a secret affair with co-star Harrison Ford. After her unexpected death on Dec. 27, Fisher’s books — including her novels — have been selling out. She tops our nonfiction bestseller list this week.

A NEW VOICE

Han Kang had a sleeper hit in 2016 with her novel “The Vegetarian,” a spare psychological thriller. The follow-up is “Human Acts,” a fractured fictional reckoning with the Gwangju massacre. The author was born in Korea, writes in Korean and teaches in Seoul; having won the Man Booker International Prize and spent time at the University of Iowa’s writing program, however, she’s poised to be an international literary star. Steph Cha reviews “Human Acts,” calling the book “torturously compelling.”

ANOTHER GOODBYE

Do you remember Dutton’s in North Hollywood? The store was a fixture on Laurel Canyon for 45 years, weathering big-box bookstore incursions and the Northridge earthquake in 1994, which toppled its notoriously packed, precarious shelves. Dave Dutton, the owner and one of the last of his literary Los Angeles family, closed the shop in 2006 — he had Parkinson’s — and died Jan. 13. Dave — born Davis — is survived by his wife, Judy, who helped him run the bookstore for all those years.

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