Like Flames Like Ashes Author: Cheng Ji Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House

How many roads does a girl have to go through to become a woman?

Girls like Sagan will step into the complex world of the adult woman described by Cheng Ji - that is the future that every girl should see, and the present that every woman must understand. Anyone who wants to understand the inner world of a woman should read this book. Desire is as unbridled as a flame, but love is as lonely as ashes.

This book is the first collection of short stories by Cheng Ji, the winner of the Douban Xiaoya Award. It brings together 11 acclaimed stories that analyze the emotional world of "more than a girl but less than a woman".

The girls described by Cheng Ji are in a transitional stage, having bid farewell to their girlish innocence but not yet fully entered into mature women. They have both vigorous vitality and a preliminary taste of the fatigue and confusion of the adult world. They have a more mature and profound understanding of love, desire and life than young girls. In every relationship they are in, they are not the ones who passively wait or cry bitterly. They yearn for love, endure loneliness, and honestly face their physical desires.

Xin Shu, who went to the party alone because he couldn't forget his old love; Xu Xiaoyun, who cheated in her middle age; Ning Yuan, who longed for comfort after a mastectomy; Zhixia, who was looking for a donor for her husband's organs; Chen Lu, who traveled across the ocean to escape her original life... In each of them, we can more or less find our own shadows. The desire for love, the search for self, the rebellion against morality, the fear of loneliness, the addiction to sex, and those greedy, fragile, and mask-breaking moments.

As Cheng Ji said, this is not just a novel about women and love. "Love is related to our family, friendship, death, politics, and our understanding of love and freedom." With this theme, Cheng Ji used her sharp brushstrokes to dissect the hidden things under the daily life, those corners of human nature that have not yet been reached and illuminated by the light.

The most anticipated original domestic female literature works in 2019, highly praised by literary predecessors Huang Yuning, Lu Nei and Qiao Mai:

Cheng Ji has the innocence of a novelist, believing in the divinity of writing and the power of narrative. Through intuition and patience, she reaches the unseen life. Her talent is nourished by the literary heritage of Chekhov, Munro and Carver. In the form of short stories, she finds a proper way to express emotions from seemingly trivial details rather than dramatic turns.

——Huang Yuning

Each era should have its own works, and I see this kind of precious creator's self-awareness in Cheng Ji. She writes based on intuition and a broad vision, while maintaining inner honesty.

——Lu Nei

Among the new generation of writers, few have described the passion deep inside a mature woman like Cheng Ji does. It is never as simple as men imagine. Men and women who want to understand the complex inner world of women should read this book.

Buckwheat

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