Aimee Bender
In Further News of Defeat, Wang reveals a remarkable ability to move fluidly through time periods and points of view, all with such a clear and vibrant voice—the stories then sing on a sentence level while also illuminating the world at large. There’s big ambition here, but shown through these small moments and stylistic flourishes, and the combination is both graceful and exciting, a tumbling between micro and macro, between individual and society, scene and era.
Jake Wolff
"Although the stories in this engrossing debut collection cover myriad perspectives, time periods, and themes, Further News of Defeat also reads with the cohesiveness and urgency of the best political novels, capturing the consequences of history’s largest, cruelest forces—war, poverty, corruption—on the individual lives of its characters. As the collection weaves through the history of China—both real and imagined—Wang tackles dark, painful subjects with startling tenderness and care. Further News of Defeat is a stunning debut from a major new talent."
2021 PEN America /Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
"Longlisted"
Robert Olen Butler
"Michael X. Wang’s collection of stories, Further News of Defeat, focuses intensely on the people of China, in their home country and in their diaspora, but make no mistake about this splendid book. It is about all of us. His stories brilliantly explore the deepest theme inherent in every human being and in most great literature: our yearning for a self, for an identity, for a place in the universe. This is a remarkable debut by a gifted new artist."
Porter Shreve
Further News of Defeat is a collection of deeply researched and engrossing, wonderfully evocative and moving short stories about the people of a particular village in China and the migration of their descendants to urban centers and new lands. What’s extraordinary about this book is how it also reads like a distilled epic bringing to life the great clash of tradition and progress in a half-century of dizzyingly rapid change in the world’s most populous country. A beautiful, assured, and unforgettable debut.
Sharon Solwitz
Wang’s debut collection is a masterful amalgam of heart, brutality, and irony. Wang sees deeply into his subject. With offhand precision his stories present a vision of recent China that feels utterly genuine even when he is raucously, indubitably inventing. This is political fiction of a high caliber.
