City Like Water – Dorothy Tse

My temples felt pierced, my brain blown open. Then I opened my eyes and realized it was just water dripping from the worn-out tap, pounding against the sink. Bang, bang, bang. A morning like any other, except the steel tap had thrust itself into our lives and declared war. My dad and I rushed to the wet market, fighting through the crowds until we spotted my mum and the other housewives on the municipal building steps, blocking its only entrance.

The street in front of them was filled with weary trucks, vegetables spread around them like a sea. Heaps of choy sum and pak choi wilted beneath a poisonous sun. Burly delivery men stood about with their hands on their hips, staring into space and letting loose the occasional half-hearted curse. Uniformed cleaning staff sat in patches of shade along the side of the road, where they dozed or scrolled on their phones. I anxiously scoured my mum’s face for some kind of explanation, but she and the rest of the women all had their eyes closed, their faces placid lakes.

When the women suddenly leaped to their feet, I braced myself, sure the delivery men would turn ferocious and fight them. But they didn’t: they stepped back wordlessly to allow them more space. The women began to arrange lotus roots on the ground, moving them about as though piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, until several human figures began to take shape. One, two, three. We all saw them: three skinny teens who’d just started secondary school. I saw shoulders begin to shake, such a violent trembling, and heads drooped, as though from broken necks.

There was a loud thud as someone fell from the roof—no, not that. I looked up and all I could see was the sun, scorching hot and too bright to look at directly. Blood vessels burst in everybody’s eyes.

Praise for City Like Water “In Natascha Bruce’s dizzy, delightful translation, Dorothy Tse summons a world that magnifies and probes the seam between dark dream and heart-rending reality. Engaging and exhilaratingly inventive, encrusted with beguiling detail, City Like Water paints a metropolis like no other—and every other.” —Polly Barton, author of What Am I, a Deer? “How to describe a city when its very existence is at odds with a dominant narrative? In City Like Water, Dorothy Tse conjures a corroded reality inhabited by strange (and estranged) citizens, seductive illogic, and bizarre meals of haunted lotus roots and rice.

With shimmering prose—gorgeously rendered by Natascha Bruce— Tse evokes the disquieting collision of revolt, nostalgia, and desire.” —Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time “Gritty and fragile at the same time, City Like Water addresses a central horror of our times: the overtaking of our cities and people by the powerful. It does so without surrendering to the tamed version of reality, but by renaming the fear and reenvisioning resistance. That is exactly what poetic lucidity is supposed to do.” —Yuri Herrera, author of Season of the Swamp 1kitap1.com/en City Like Water 1kitap1.com/en Also by Dorothy Tse Owlish Snow and Shadow 1kitap1.com/en City Like Water A Novel Dorothy Tse Translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce Graywolf Press 1kitap1.com/en Copyright © 2021 by Dorothy Tse Originally published in Chinese by The House of Hong Kong Literature English translation copyright © 2026 by Natascha Bruce The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only.

You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. Published by Graywolf Press 212 Third Avenue North, Suite 485 Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401 All rights reserved. www.graywolfpress.org Published in the United States of America ISBN 978-1-64445-375-9 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-64445-376-6 (ebook) 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 First Graywolf Printing, 2026 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 26066819618b7e84
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,686,836 bytes (2.562 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781644453759, 9781644453766
• Pages: 83
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 107.89 minutes
• Total Words: 21,579
• Total Characters: 121,429
• Average Words per Page: 259.99
• Average Characters per Page: 1463.0

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