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City Like Water
Not yet published
Expected 3 Mar 26The city you grew up in is gone, as if sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So much has vanished with it—classmates, teachers, counterfeit watches, the erotic toe cleavage that used to lead the way down secret passages. Yet you still catch snatches of conversation lingering in the air and glimpse sun-dazzled residents retreating into dark crevices.
People seem to keep disappearing. Your mother joins in a housewives’ protest, each woman waving the fake, bloody lotus roots they were sold until police helicopters unleash a glittery spray that turns them into statues. Then it’s just you and your father at home, until he is quietly absorbed into the enormous new TV gifted by the government, and you spot him doing tai chi or picking through leftovers in the background of soap operas. And didn’t you once have a little sister, before she flew away in her school uniform? As the police go undercover and transform your neighborhood into a violent labyrinth you can no longer navigate, where does this leave you?
Lucid, nightmarish, and indelible, City Like Water is a wondrous and pointed message in a bottle from a city not so different from your own.
People seem to keep disappearing. Your mother joins in a housewives’ protest, each woman waving the fake, bloody lotus roots they were sold until police helicopters unleash a glittery spray that turns them into statues. Then it’s just you and your father at home, until he is quietly absorbed into the enormous new TV gifted by the government, and you spot him doing tai chi or picking through leftovers in the background of soap operas. And didn’t you once have a little sister, before she flew away in her school uniform? As the police go undercover and transform your neighborhood into a violent labyrinth you can no longer navigate, where does this leave you?
Lucid, nightmarish, and indelible, City Like Water is a wondrous and pointed message in a bottle from a city not so different from your own.
112 pages, Paperback
Expected publication March 3, 2026
2 people are currently reading
223 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Tse
16 books36 followersDorothy Tse Hiu-hung (謝曉虹) is the author of four short story collections in Chinese, including So Black (《好黑》, 2005) and A Dictionary of Two Cities (《雙城辭典》, 2013). Translations of her short fiction have appeared in The Guardian, Paper Republic, The Margins (AAWW) and Anomaly. Her English-language collection Snow and Shadow (2014, trans. Nicky Harman), was longlisted for the University of Rochester’s 2015 Best Translated Book Award, and collects short stories from her earlier Chinese books as well as previously unpublished works.
A recipient of the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award, Tse also attended The University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 2011. She is a co-founder of the Hong Kong literary magazine Fleurs des lettres, and currently teaches literature and writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.
一九七七年生。
似乎一直在香港生活，但其實只是在有限的幾條街道上重複地走來走去，與固定的朋友互通消息，以及看各種虛幻的新聞。九七年開始寫作，作品收入大陸、台灣及香港等地之小說及散文選集，於○三年出版《好黑》（香港，青文）。
A recipient of the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award, Tse also attended The University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 2011. She is a co-founder of the Hong Kong literary magazine Fleurs des lettres, and currently teaches literature and writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.
一九七七年生。
似乎一直在香港生活，但其實只是在有限的幾條街道上重複地走來走去，與固定的朋友互通消息，以及看各種虛幻的新聞。九七年開始寫作，作品收入大陸、台灣及香港等地之小說及散文選集，於○三年出版《好黑》（香港，青文）。
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 19, 2025
What this book doesn’t reveal about itself is that it’s about Hong Kong, though here, it's depicted as a dystopian dreamscape. Hong Kong is not mentioned explicitly, and the blurb keeps things vague, so if you’re a stupid American like me, then the only way to figure it out is to Wikipedia the culturally specific terms that are sprinkled throughout the narrative. (Even before reading, I suggest looking up the 831 incident, the 721 incident, and the umbrella movement).
You don’t actually have to know that City Like Water is about Hong Kong to enjoy it. It can be about any dystopian city. The narrator is both nostalgic for and critical of some bygone era that perhaps never truly existed at all, and Hong Kong occupies the unique geopolitical space for exploring conflicting reactions to change, but Dorothy Tse also does an excellent job of portraying just how universal these feelings can be. It’s a stunning and disorienting piece of writing about any place where reality becomes both debatable and a matter of life or death.
The political undertones are unmistakable, but certain aspects of the narrative still must be kept unspoken. As a result, the book relies heavily on metaphors that continuously accumulate, fragment, and transform. The surreal, dissociative, and sometimes sinister imagery here is extraordinary. The opening metaphor of a bunk bed as a boat immediately establishes a sense of precarious transit, and that unmoored feeling never leaves. There’s a profound sense of exile throughout the novel, even in claustrophobic spaces, where no movement can occur. The narrator clearly has a flexible and fraught relationship with time, space, history, and truth. To reflect how memory is uncontrollable, the prose style is associative, fractured, hallucinatory, ambiguous, and unreliable. Repeated references are made to people who might not be real — most notably, a younger sister who haunts the narrative. There’s antagonists working behind the scenes to gaslight everyone, forcing people to consent to the normalization of pain and misery, but this villain’s face is unstable. It is usually the state, but there are also critiques in here of consumer culture, academic institutions, the stigmatization of suicide, the entertainment industry, and more. Sometimes the horrors become grounded in something concrete and hyper specific (like in one section about a protest in response to a scam involving lotus roots), allowing characters’ rage to become targeted. Other times, things are nebulous.
Despite the heavy focus on grief, trauma, suicide, political precarity, and economic instability, City Like Water is not an entirely hopeless book. If there’s a plot at all amidst the fever dream of paranoid imagery, it’s definitely one about making sense of encounters with state sanctioned violence. When things get bleak, the book sometimes shows a willingness to deconstruct its own pessimism, relentlessly attempting to witness and document things that are in the process of being erased. The narrator doesn’t always acknowledge the signs of hope, at least not explicitly, but readers should. A lot of the book is about how the imagination has the power to obscure inconvenient truths, making the status quo more palatable to those who would otherwise want to resist it. However, at the same time, I couldn’t help but continue to believe that imagination should also have the power to think up a better status quo. There’s a sense that underneath the rigid, surveilled, and censored surface of the city, there’s still something that (or someone who) dreams without limit.
~Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a Digital ARC. All opinions are my own.~
You don’t actually have to know that City Like Water is about Hong Kong to enjoy it. It can be about any dystopian city. The narrator is both nostalgic for and critical of some bygone era that perhaps never truly existed at all, and Hong Kong occupies the unique geopolitical space for exploring conflicting reactions to change, but Dorothy Tse also does an excellent job of portraying just how universal these feelings can be. It’s a stunning and disorienting piece of writing about any place where reality becomes both debatable and a matter of life or death.
The political undertones are unmistakable, but certain aspects of the narrative still must be kept unspoken. As a result, the book relies heavily on metaphors that continuously accumulate, fragment, and transform. The surreal, dissociative, and sometimes sinister imagery here is extraordinary. The opening metaphor of a bunk bed as a boat immediately establishes a sense of precarious transit, and that unmoored feeling never leaves. There’s a profound sense of exile throughout the novel, even in claustrophobic spaces, where no movement can occur. The narrator clearly has a flexible and fraught relationship with time, space, history, and truth. To reflect how memory is uncontrollable, the prose style is associative, fractured, hallucinatory, ambiguous, and unreliable. Repeated references are made to people who might not be real — most notably, a younger sister who haunts the narrative. There’s antagonists working behind the scenes to gaslight everyone, forcing people to consent to the normalization of pain and misery, but this villain’s face is unstable. It is usually the state, but there are also critiques in here of consumer culture, academic institutions, the stigmatization of suicide, the entertainment industry, and more. Sometimes the horrors become grounded in something concrete and hyper specific (like in one section about a protest in response to a scam involving lotus roots), allowing characters’ rage to become targeted. Other times, things are nebulous.
Despite the heavy focus on grief, trauma, suicide, political precarity, and economic instability, City Like Water is not an entirely hopeless book. If there’s a plot at all amidst the fever dream of paranoid imagery, it’s definitely one about making sense of encounters with state sanctioned violence. When things get bleak, the book sometimes shows a willingness to deconstruct its own pessimism, relentlessly attempting to witness and document things that are in the process of being erased. The narrator doesn’t always acknowledge the signs of hope, at least not explicitly, but readers should. A lot of the book is about how the imagination has the power to obscure inconvenient truths, making the status quo more palatable to those who would otherwise want to resist it. However, at the same time, I couldn’t help but continue to believe that imagination should also have the power to think up a better status quo. There’s a sense that underneath the rigid, surveilled, and censored surface of the city, there’s still something that (or someone who) dreams without limit.
~Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a Digital ARC. All opinions are my own.~
Want to read
November 3, 2025There have been so many dystopian novels about the world flooding lately, and I couldn't possibly imagine why! :)
October 31, 2025
A strange fever dream with moments of (semi) clarity and moments that feel completely out of another world. Sometimes tongue in cheek, often freaky as hell (scary?), always ACAB. Very unique and different! Thank you to Graywolf for the galley and look out for City Like Water on 3/3/26.
3.5
3.5
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
[ 3.5/5 stars ]
CITY LIKE WATER (tr. Natascha Bruce) is a dystopian world in which people seem to keep disappearing. When the future melts into the past, one relies on own's memory as the reality of transformation invades one's space. Lucid yet hallucinatory, nebulous yet concrete, there are jolts of incisive chaos to show a (dystopian) future that might not be too far from our own.
With a metaphorical and lyrical prose that tangibly manifests the fracture and surreal vibes, what's the real history? Like the title, this book is formless and rampant - I must say that Tse's works (also OWLISH) aren't for everyone and it's undoubtedly that Tse's (unspoken) message is way deeper than I could grasp. In less than 100 pages, even though most of it went over my head, each word feels covered with purpose that allows one to interpret oneself. It's about Hong Kong but it can be any place. Political and fever dream, it's better to buddy read and/or reread.
[ I received an ARC from the publisher - Graywolf Press . All opinions are my own ]
CITY LIKE WATER (tr. Natascha Bruce) is a dystopian world in which people seem to keep disappearing. When the future melts into the past, one relies on own's memory as the reality of transformation invades one's space. Lucid yet hallucinatory, nebulous yet concrete, there are jolts of incisive chaos to show a (dystopian) future that might not be too far from our own.
With a metaphorical and lyrical prose that tangibly manifests the fracture and surreal vibes, what's the real history? Like the title, this book is formless and rampant - I must say that Tse's works (also OWLISH) aren't for everyone and it's undoubtedly that Tse's (unspoken) message is way deeper than I could grasp. In less than 100 pages, even though most of it went over my head, each word feels covered with purpose that allows one to interpret oneself. It's about Hong Kong but it can be any place. Political and fever dream, it's better to buddy read and/or reread.
[ I received an ARC from the publisher - Graywolf Press . All opinions are my own ]
Review of advance copy
Was lucky to find an advance review copy of this book on the community bookshelf in Haggerston station - I read it in a night. So devastating & so beautiful, it’s the most abstract/poetic prose that I’ve been able to easily follow (I guess it helps that it’s so short), you have the feeling that each chapter is a short story of its own, but they all fit together like puzzle pieces too - full of extremely beautiful and poignant images with politics pulsing through them. Very comforting to read something that tries to hold onto life affirming moments even as reality disintegrates around us, as people are consistently ‘disappeared’, time breaks down & spaces become sealed off. Will be rereading for sure.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Much like Dorothy Tse’s “Owlish” this novel was surreal and impossible to keep a hold of. Similar to her first novel, this one is about Hong Kong and its history. There is a loose narrative, but its episodes are very bizarre and leave you with a lot to chew on (not unlike the undercooked lotus root in one of the vignettes).
It was disjointed, disorienting and evocative. The novel paints a picture of an explosive political situation, life in a surveillance state, and a longing for a home that no longer exists. While it’s a sobering vision of what life can look like as a country falls to totalitarianism, it is also an absurd, humorous book that highlights the humanity of those who live under such a regime.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
It was disjointed, disorienting and evocative. The novel paints a picture of an explosive political situation, life in a surveillance state, and a longing for a home that no longer exists. While it’s a sobering vision of what life can look like as a country falls to totalitarianism, it is also an absurd, humorous book that highlights the humanity of those who live under such a regime.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
Review of advance copy
Это сложное произведение, не очень понятное русскоязычному читателю. Я бы сказала, что это исследование коллективной памяти и опыта жителей Гонконга, сталкивающихся с изменениями и потерей прошлого. Они теряют политическую (и физическую) независимость – и тут важным становится сохранение культуры и индивидуальности.
Книга состоит из коротких глав-воспоминаний, в которых не уверена даже рассказчица. Всё сюрреалистично, местами нелепо, местами страшно. Произведение, пожалуй, хорошее, но полностью мне лично "чужое".
С другой стороны, я полезла гуглить про исторические события, ставшие триггером для написания романа, получила новые знания :)
Книга состоит из коротких глав-воспоминаний, в которых не уверена даже рассказчица. Всё сюрреалистично, местами нелепо, местами страшно. Произведение, пожалуй, хорошее, но полностью мне лично "чужое".
С другой стороны, я полезла гуглить про исторические события, ставшие триггером для написания романа, получила новые знания :)
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
For such a short book/novella, this was quite an unsettling read. In between dream like and nightmarish, where water is just insidious. The unnamed narrator has various experiences with water, missing relatives and bloody lotus roots. I couldn't put this down, despite my unease.
I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.
I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
thank you sage from macmillan for the advanced copy! being inside dorothy tse’s mind is the best thing i have ever experienced. from owlish to city like water, she creates such unique, dystopian stories that dive deeper into the political state of hong kong. please anyone read her books :3
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Trippy, bizarre, dystopian... I mean, read the publisher's description and you'll know if this strange little book is right for you. Even if plenty of it went over my head, it still gave me a lot to reflect on. Dorothy Tse's prose is vivid and disturbing and really sinks its teeth into you.
Want to read
September 10, 2025Not yet published • Expected 12 Mar 26
Review of advance copy
Absolutely astonishing. I have no idea what's happening but it's incredible. All dream logic and ferocious imagery, a genuine masterpiece.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
A strange, hallucinatory novella that I could appreciate on an intellectual level, but which ultimately left me cold.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
3.75?
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews