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The stories in The Book of Shanghai <\/em>also highlight the deep rift between human experience and the advance of technology, cybernetic umbilical cords that anchor us to the future while leaving us adrift in the present. Loneliness is a recurring theme, along with a disconnection that seems ironic in a city so plugged into global networks and development. In \u201cThe Novelist in the Attic\u201d (Shen Dacheng, translated by Jack Hargreaves) a writer struggles with his legacy, and questions his usefulness in a world that has left him behind (I particularly enjoyed the following lament: \u201cJust because I, the writer, am simple-minded, my protagonist has turned out to be a dumb fool too. Imagine that, my sole contribution to this world, nothing but the passing on of my own imbecility into fiction.\u201d) Like other stories in the collection, \u201cThe Novelist in the Attic\u201d has a touch of the surreal, mirroring the other-worldly sense of the murky labyrinthine streets that we see from beneath the shimmering high-rises of the city.<\/p>\n In several of the stories in The Book of Shanghai <\/em>lives cross paths in chance encounters and stolen moments, while family bonds disintegrate and are redefined: in \u201cThe Story of Ah-Ming\u201d (Wang Zhanhei, translated by Christopher MacDonald), an elderly woman is cast out by her family because of the lengths she goes to in her attempts to help them, while in \u201cSnow\u201d (Chen Danyan, translated by Paul Harris), a woman is surrounded by relatives but still feels lonely, and escapes into literature. The city comes alive (in sometimes unnerving ways) in these tales where ruptures abound, relationships falter, and individuals hurtle perilously towards solitude, shame, failure or death. In my favourite story of the collection, \u201cState of Trance\u201d (Chen Qiufan, translated by Josh Stenberg), we accompany one man through the last night on Earth, as he decides to take \u201can action that will place a perfect full stop at the end of civilisation\u201d: his mission is to go to Shanghai Library and return the book he has borrowed.<\/p>\n