Author Description

As a chapbook, Three Chapters is brief, yet it distills the core of Xi Nan's writing: between daily life and illness, between exile and memory, between love and solitude. It is a book about 'how to keep on living, ' but also about 'how to go on writing.' The chapbook carries no dramatic plots, but a slow, steady seep. It asks readers to pause, to notice details usually ignored, to listen to faint voices outside the noise. Reading becomes a way of living with life itself. Seen from a literary perspective, Xi Nan extends the modernist diary-fragment tradition, but with the mark of contemporary transnational life. She does not smooth over the breaks; she lets the fragments stay broken, keeping the writing open and real. In short, Three Chapters is an honest, delicate, and weighty chapbook. It avoids grand narratives, instead turning fragile instants into words that can endure. For readers, this may be what makes it moving-not that it tries to convince, but that it invites you simply to look together. - Xi Nan & Fish Lu STUDIO, London 19th September, 2025