Cocoon – Read the World A to Z: China

Press Quotes

Praise for Cocoon

“Cocoon is a stupendous novel, a beautiful and formidable achievement on the grandest scale. Its ruthless psychological realism is wondrously amplified by Zhang Yueran’s magical powers of description. The novel’s two narrators, childhood friends, talking and remembering through a long night, speak for a lost generation making its way across an abyss. Their parents and grandparents are damaged and compromised, stunned into silence by the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution. Li Jiaqi and her friend Cheng Gong are ‘walking through a fog made of secrets, stumbling along a path we couldn’t see.’ A glimpse of a forbidden sibling, a dead baby sister, is one of the most extraordinary moments in contemporary literature. Li Jiaqi’s hopeless pursuit of her emotionally unresponsive father is one of the most touching. A grandparent suspended for countless years between life and death summons a terrifying cultural stagnation. Zhang Yueran’s scenes and images have an unworldly gleam of both hard-won insight and timeless truth. The novel is a triumph.”
IAN McEWAN

“Cocoon is an extraordinary coming-of-age novel, which confronts the cultural and psychological legacy of the older generations with deep understanding and penetrating insights. The story unfolds with narrative exuberance and acute intelligence. It is Zhang Yureran’s masterpiece.”
HA JIN, author of the National Book Award Winner Waiting

“A magnificent, resonant book, both a detective story and a philosophical investigation, told through two narratives that merge in unconventional ways: time slips back and forth as three generations seem to meld into one another. At the novel’s heart are questions of justice, retribution, class rupture and historical reckoning. But Cocoon’s emotional power arises from a very particular phenomenon: the intimacy, and vast gulf, between fathers and their children.”
MADELEINE THIEN, Times Literary Supplement 

“Zhang Yueran’s fierce, tender, penetrating Cocoon shows how the catastrophic legacy of Mao’s Cultural Revolution blights Chinese lives.”
BOYD TONKIN’s favorite books of 2022 in The Spectator

“Zhang dazzles with an intricately crafted web of secrets centered on two childhood friends in China. … In lyrical prose, Zhang deeply humanizes her leads as they look to the past in an effort to understand themselves. It adds up to a remarkable and tragic story of family and community.”
Publishers Weekly, starred review

“An irresistible siren-song of a novel by one of our most original voices … a grandfather lies in a coma, his brain destroyed by a nail and two friends reach across time and the gaps between them to unravel the mystery of that nail, a mystery that has haunted and tormented both their families. A transcendent novel that suggests that family secrets and family crimes are the nation from which none of us can ever fully escape.”
JUNOT DÍAZ, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

“Zhang writes with fine-grained intelligence and sensitivity. … Zhang’s focus and finesse—plus the rhythmic subtlety of Tiang’s English prose—make this novel a luminous gateway into current Chinese fiction.”
Wall Street Journal

“Zhang’s prose is meticulously economical and is well served by her long-term translator, Jeremy Tiang. In this expertly constructed novel she achieves a masterful blend of narrative suspense, emotional intimacy and self-discovery: as her characters struggle to recapture their childhood friendship, unravel the reasons for the long estrangement and understand the many ways in which their own lives have been blighted by the past, they progressively reveal to the reader the generational trauma that afflicts both families, elegantly evoking the lived experience of millions more.”
The Guardian

“Zhang is unsparing in her description of the unresolved legacies of China’s recent past. She not only traces the dark shadow of revolutionary violence inflicted on the society but also questions the nature and degree of wellbeing promised by the endless curation of material self-interest.”
Irish Times

“Flickers of personal history can quietly suggest a national scale. … As the past gives up its ghosts, Cocoon becomes a tapestry.”
The Telegraph

“The nail in the skull serves as an indelible metaphor for a country for whom the wiping out of collective memory is embedded within the national psyche.”
Daily Mail

“The twists and absurdities of Chinese history circle each other across time. In the most personal way, Cocoon charts a pathway through individual and collective memory, through the most hidden fissures and bonds between young people and their parents. With exquisite, precise, and lyrical language, the novel sets the benchmark for younger authors seeking to write about history and individuals, proving once again that Zhang Yueran’s writing surpasses and distinguishes itself from that of her contemporaries.”
YAN LIANKE

“We in the West know so little about what’s really going on in China below the surface of public events, but now there is big news: the advent of Zhang Yueran, one of the finest young writers of her generation. Cocoon is a deft, brilliant piece of writing in two voices—a clarion call. Her novel should find a huge and sympathetic audience in the English language.”
JAY PARINI, author of Borges and Me

“Deftly and deeply plotted—one can easily see Cocoon as a mini-series on TV—the half-dozen or so main characters are complex and urgent.”
Asian Review of Books

“History, the most problematic of China’s intergenerational connections. The shadows of a chaotic, confusing past, still just within reach, resonating in a bleak contemporary China. A new generation trying to reckon with a communal past shrouded in secrecy and shame. In this captivating novel Zhang Yueran suggests that the new Chinese society cannot be at peace with itself until it breaks out of the ideological straitjacket of the past.”
PAUL FRENCH, author of Midnight in Peking

“Zhang Yueran is one of the most exciting new Chinese writers. Her work is original and thought-provoking, and her writing style is of a mature, well-rounded nature. The world needs an engagement with China more than ever at the moment that goes beyond the stereotypes and well-trodden genres, to develop genuine links and understanding.”
FRANCES WEIGHTMAN, Director of The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing

“Fearlessly probing and introspective.”
On the Seawall

“Zhang Yueran, one of the most renowned young writers from China, tells the story of the country’s past in a different perspective and with a unique insight. In her beautiful and meaningful prose, hope and love reside where trauma heals.”
The Millions

“This novel on the ghosts of the Cultural Revolution reveals a talented young Chinese writer in Zhang Yueran.”
Transfuge

“A great and beautiful novel, from one of the promising pens of contemporary China.”
Image, Demain le monde

“With finesse, and mastery of the two-voiced storytelling technique, Zhang Yueran unlocks, pries open, explores the intricate depths of broken couples, of imploded families, and of scarred generations who inherit the abuses of their ancestors.”
Libération

“With mastery of the art of suspense, Zhang Yueran skilfully brings together the pieces of a scattered puzzle.”
Télérama

“This book is a raging fire.”
Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire

“Without ever falling into pathos, Zhang Yueran paints an incisive portrait of a generation scarred by decisions made in the dark hours of history.”
Le Courrier Suisse