The Enchanting Lives of Others

by Can Xue, Porochista Khakpour (Afterword), Annelise Finegan (Translator)

A celebration of the beguiling power of literature, from one of the world’s greatest storytellers

At the Pigeon Book Club, a circle of readers gathers for exhilarating meetings to discuss literature. The only requirements for entry are an all-encompassing love of books and the intuition that to read is to love and to love is to read. Xiao Sang, a department store clerk, wonders if life can ever be as captivating as a novel. Newlyweds Fei and Han Ma struggle to build a marriage as Han Ma discovers a surprising gift for storytelling. Xiao Ma, a hopeful dreamer, explores the possibility of romance with an older man. Bound by a shared passion for fiction, each book club member seeks to understand the relationship between the stories they read and the lives they lead, reveling in both the quotidian details and the ecstasy of aesthetics.

This is the most accessible work yet from the celebrated writer Can Xue: a utopian comedy and a work of profound joy, a love song to literary inspiration and the remarkable beauty of the ordinary. The Enchanting Lives of Others explores what it means to know and be known to others through the transformative power of reading.

Genres: China, Fiction, Literature, Contemporary

448 pages, Hardcover

Published February 24, 2026

About the author

残雪

Can Xue (Chinese: 残雪; pinyin: Cán Xuĕ), née Deng Xiaohua (Chinese: 邓小华), is a Chinese avant-garde fiction writer, literary critic, and tailor. She was born May 30, 1953 in Changsha, Hunan, China. Her family was severely persecuted following her father being labeled an ultra-rightist in the Anti-rightist Movement of 1957. Her writing, which consists mostly of short fiction, breaks with the realism of earlier modern Chinese writers. She has also written novels, novellas, and literary criticisms of the work of Dante, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka. Some of her fiction has been translated and published in English.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Zoe]

finished this awhile ago but i've been having this issue of finishing meaningful books and feeling like i have no words in me to accurately describe my experience of them. well i guess first off i LOVE can xue. this is the second book i've read by her and i just have never read anything like her writing--so humble, genuine, upfront...the way that the characters are so straightforward about deep emotional truths while still having these compelling arcs and experiences was so foreign and so fascinating. makes me think about show not tell and what it means that a lot of this book and its emotional content is told outright. most of all i think it is such a huge refresher in the face of spare metaphorized repressed mfa prose. and what's coolest is how this prose style (especially surrounding communication between the characters) actually opens a window to a different world and different culture of relationality and emotion that i rlly liked

i also am just in love with the depiction of reading and the depiction of love and the way that the two are intertwined. like everyone in the pigeon book club was just falling in love thru their reading and it was so sweet and so meaningful. the borders between reading and life and relationships were so thin and it felt like maybe one of the first times i've seen something like my relationship to reading so accurately portrayed. thats cool

also in my head, the first book they read in the book club the xxxx one was event factory by renee gladman. i want to be in the pigeon book club so bad let me in.

here's some quotes i liked:

"xiao sang, fei, and i were the earliest to experience confusion and suffering while reading this novel, but in the end we harvested its fruits --no matter what these are. we have devoted ourselves, just like people in love devote themselves to their feelings" 162 --cool to see a reflection of the experience of reading a book that causes confusion and suffering in the moment but can eventually birth something --this was like me reading toaf

"'i've said it before: if a book can't enter my life, and melt into my life, then it isn't the book i am seeking'" 167

"xiao sang adored real life; she'd grown attached to fiction because of it" 167

"it was because of wanting to love that she wrote and read. this was the source of her life of passion. in real life, her love had been impeded, therefore love shifted to her soul and was expressed through writing."

"the difference between them was that he was unwilling to be an ordinary person, while qiaozi was comfortable living in an ordinary environment. this dispute was unforeseen when they initially got together. back then, he had envisioned qiaozi based on his heart's desire and not according to her actual being. heishi's unwillingness to be ordinary had formed early on into a tendency in his nature......by nature he couldn't be ordinary, and at this late date it wouldn't change, because he took this to be where the value of his life lay. being ordinary would destroy everything he had built up til now" 364

[Loveing]

In this new book, Can Xue reduces the fantastical elements and uses concise, plain language to sketch the shimmering outline of an ideal world. Remarkably, as we listen to the thoughts and actions of these idealists, the distorted parts of our consciousness—those that make us hate others—seem to heal, as if the soul’s true essence rises from the depths of awareness.

[Morbid Swither]

Sublime. Approachable.

[sawyer wolf]

felt like i was dreaming the whole time i was reading it; english major love surge of a book

[Ken Loft]

This fine novel is overflowin' with life and did enchant me as much as her incredible Mother River shorts and Yellow Mud Street/Old Floating Cloud novellas.

The reader finds their world running parallel to events in the novel as its characters experience the same with their reading, and a profound circularity is induced. The reader is inspired to dig deep and get totally enchanted with literature and life.

The nets are cast and I am snared, totally epic stuff, Can Xue total genius continues to amaze.