Confession - I’m not a short story reader. But this collection has opened my eyes to a new magical, surreal and enthralling world, and now I’m wondering what I’ve been missing. It’s impossible to put my finger on what it is about these tales that drew me in: they’re ethereal yet grounded, fleeting, surreal, fascinating and just unlike anything I’ve read before and I’m now captivated. Kind thanks to the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Elsewhere is Yan Ge's debut collection of beguiling, evocative and perceptive English-language short stories written using incisive and exacting prose, each with a thread leading back to China and its people. While these stories have the propensity to probe the quotidian and the banality of modern life, they still often feel, in direct contrast to this, ethereal; there's almost a transcendent feel to them, and the juxtaposition between these two aspects is what makes this anthology shine. The extraordinary versus the couldn't-be-more-ordinary. Not only do the chosen topics of the stories gleam with originality, but they also have candour; dark humour; and intelligence emanating from each page. The Little House tells the story of a diverse group of inhabitants of a Chinese provincial town who come together to form an encampment in Ping'an Square after an earthquake leaves their former homes uninhabitable. During Shooting An Elephant, married couple Shanshan and Declan move into a new terraced cottage in Dublin. But after a traumatic incident occurred while on honeymoon in Burma/Myanmar, Shanshan wishes to return there to hopefully bring some closure to the issue; closure that seems to have been unattainable back at home. Another vignette, entitled Stockholm, unwinds the yarn of a novelist and new mother who is encouraged by friends to travel to Sodermalm, Sweden, to attend a literary retreat after recently giving birth to her newborn. Made up of wild, exciting, disturbing stories about dispossession and ideas of home and identity, and set between contemporary Ireland and ancient China, Yan effortlessly takes you as the reader wherever she goes, between cultures and genres. I fell under Ge's spell pretty swiftly and didn't want the book to conclude, so I definitely see more of her writings in my reading future. The tales include a polyphony of voices, anti-dualistic propositions and characters whose identities are constantly in flux — this sense of perpetual displacement is what Ge explores and celebrates in her fiction. These are her people, wherever they now may be situated, and these are their stories.