“Years ago, around the time I started writing Cocoon, I was slowly beginning to understand that I didn’t know how to love, or perhaps I’d lost part of my ability to love. As I wrote, and at length my father slipped into my words without me realizing it, I started to grasp that many issues of love had to do with him. Even so, it was only with this novel that I truly understood that perhaps his temperament wasn’t something he was born with, but a product of his history, his generation.”

Translator

“When Cocoon was published in 2016, I was blown away by the verve and delicacy with which it treated the lingering aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Although I’d already translated two books by Zhang, this felt like such an evolution in her writing style that I needed to find a new voice in English for her. It’s been a pleasurable challenge meeting the demands of this bold, heart-wrenching novel, with its reframing of recent Chinese history from a millennial perspective, and I can’t wait for Anglophone readers to come under its spell.”

Publisher

“Years ago, I read Jung Chang’s Wild Swans, and was blown away by that story of three generations of women in twentieth-century China. Chang’s book was a wonderful voyage into a country that until then had been relatively unknown to me. After that initial encounter I read many other novels set in China, but none of them excited me as much as this captivating generational novel by Zhang Yueran. Cocoon is an unbelievably mature work, full of psychological depth and written in a style that is fresh while also being precise and sensitive. Zhang is without a doubt one of the most promising and unique voices in contemporary Chinese literature.”

Praise for Cocoon

“The twists and absurdities of Chinese history circle each other across time. In the most personal way, Cocoon charts a pathway through individual and collective memory, through the most hidden fissures and bonds between young people and their parents. With exquisite, precise, and lyrical language, the novel sets the benchmark for younger authors seeking to write about history and individuals, proving once again that Zhang Yueran’s writing surpasses and distinguishes itself from that of her contemporaries.”

YAN LIANKE

“An irresistible siren-song of a novel by one of our most original voices … A grandfather lies in a coma, his brain destroyed by a nail, and two friends reach across time and the gaps between them to unravel the mystery of that nail, a mystery that has haunted and tormented both their families. A transcendent novel that suggests that family secrets and family crimes are the nation from which none of us can ever fully escape.”

JUNOT DÍAZ