Author(s): Xiaolu Guo

Fiction

Coral and her frisbee-obsessed boyfriend, Red live on the ground floor of a cramped tower block in the megalopolis that is Beijing. The very epitome of disaffected, unfulfilled youth, their already fragile existence is shattered by the arrival of a mysterious fishy package - as the smells of the sea flood her home, Coral is transported back to a traumatic childhood dominated by solitude, fear and shame.

Born on a boat during a storm, and orphaned soon after, Coral was raised by silent grandparents amongst the stern and superstitious fishermen of the remote Village of Stone. Shunned from birth as a bringer of ill fortune, and exposed to the malevolent, threatening forces of a closed-off-society. Coral immersed herself in the minutiae of the landscape around her. At fifteen, she escaped to the big city and shut the door on the darkness of her past.
As the narrative darts between the manic sprawl of Beijing and the hypnotic rhymes of a tiny coastal village, our narrator stuggles to navigate a path through painful and hidden memories of a time of shame, and a loss of innocence. But when an old, sick man appears on Coral's doorstep, the past and present shockingly converge, and she is forced to confront the secrets of her history in order to realise her dreams for the future.