Amber’s Heteroland: 39 Cities 

 

Now available in Chinese

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Published in January 2023, Amber’s Heteroland: 39 Cities is a collection of short stories, each set in one of the cities that appears in Amber.

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The past glows like amber—sealed in time, yet still holding its light.

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Beginning in Dunhuang, with echoes of the 1937 Paris Exposition along the Seine, the collection moves between past and present, history and memory. Across its cities, the stories retrace the footsteps of Mo Xiaoxian, the protagonist of Amber, while uncovering lives and histories beyond her own. From Kyakhta, Hohhot, and Baotou to New York and Taipei, private memories become entwined with the histories of place.

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Each of the thirty-nine cities speaks in its own voice, through stories that are part memory, part fiction, and part fragment of a larger history. Together, these self-contained narratives form a constellation: distinct yet interconnected, carrying echoes of Amber while illuminating some of the mysteries the novel leaves unresolved.

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Here, no private history is entirely separate from the larger currents of history. Every life is touched by forces beyond itself; every city carries traces of what has come before. Writing becomes a way of gathering those traces—and of holding on to what time might otherwise erase.” change to “Here, no private history is entirely separate from the larger currents of history. Every life is touched by forces beyond itself; every city carries traces of what has come before. Writing becomes a way of gathering those traces, and of holding on to the moments time might otherwise erase

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The thirty-nine stories expand the world of Amber, intertwining its fictional universe with the real world until the boundaries between the two begin to blur.