Individuals: Flash Fiction

Individuals is a collection of very short short stories, so-called "flash fiction": few if any reach 1000 words, most are quite a bit less. This 180-page book contains more than 50 distinct stories. The author Lao Ma, the pen name of Ma Junjie, has a day job as Professor of Literature at People's University (Renmin Daixue) in Beijing.

Since so little of this sort of thing makes it into English, the book would be worth picking up for its novelty value alone. It helps, however, Individuals is very readable, that a number of the stories are rather good, and that all seem to have been ably translated by Li Qisheng and Li Ping.