Jennifer Egan is the author of four novels and a short story collection. A Visit from the Goon Squad was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and also won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her stories have been published in the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope and Ploughshares, and her non-fiction appears frequently in the New York Times Magazine. She lives with her husband and sons in Brooklyn.

Praise for Jennifer Egan:

‘If there was any justice in the world, no one would be allowed to write a first novel of such beauty and scepticism.’ Pat Conroy, author of

The Prince of Tides

‘Edgy and beautiful . . . A writer reaching for literary greatness.’

Daily Mail

‘A trip that takes the reader through stunning emotional terrain.’

New Yorker

‘Incredibly affecting . . . sad, funny and wise.’

Guardian

‘Evocative . . . An auspicious first novel for a very promising writer.’

Washington Post

‘Brilliant in its authenticity and overwhelming passion.’

Boston Globe

‘Elegant and brilliant . . . Spellbinding, heartbreaking and told by a master.’

Cosmopolitan

‘Egan attains an electrifying level of emotional intensity that translates into some of the most vivid and original descriptions of place found in recent fiction.’

Booklist

Constable & Robinson Ltd

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Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Ltd., Toronto. Originally published in a different form in the UK by Picador, London, in 1993, and subsequently published in the US by Nan A. Talese, an imprint of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, 1996

The stories in this collection have appeared, in a slightly different form, in the following publications: ‘Why China?’, ‘The Stylist’ and ‘Sisters of the Moon’ in the New Yorker; ‘Sacred Heart’ in New England Review and Best of New England Review; ‘Emerald City’ in Mademoiselle (as ‘Another Pretty Face’) and Voices of the Xiled; ‘The Watch Trick’ and ‘Passing the Hat’ in GQ; ‘Puerto Vallarta’ in Ploughshares; ‘One Piece’ in the North American Review; ‘Letter to Josephine’ in Boulevard.

Published in this edition in the UK by Corsair, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2012

Copyright © Jennifer Egan 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996

The right of Jennifer Egan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78033-121-8
eISBN 978-1-78033-805-7

Printed and bound in the UK

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For their guidance and support during the years I spent writing these stories I am grateful to the following: Tom Jenks, Daniel Menaker, Mary Beth Hughes, Ruth Danon, Romulus Linney, Philip Schultz, Diana Cavallo, Daniel Hoffman, Don Lee, Virginia Barber, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Nan A. Talese, Jesse Cohen, Diane Marcus, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Corporation of Yaddo.

CONTENTS

WHY CHINA?