The Dog Hunters of Lojang

These fifteen outrageous stories take place in an imaginary Chinese setting with no specific time or location. The evil little parables from the »Djinn Academy« permeate the book like images from the mind, and alongside Chinese emperors Darvasi presents dreamers, engineers, artists, dog hunters and intellectuals, but above all children.

Using the bright or pale coloring of oriental fairytales, he tells of the misfortune of immortality, or the senselessness of war, of puzzling and dangerous works of art, but also of those daily shocks that accompany love and envy, the injustice of fate and the all-permeating feeling of futility. What makes the book so charming to read is the seductive mixture of supposedly naïve fantasy and unfathomable puzzlement. The unmistakable mark of Darvasi becomes much more prominent in this labyrinth of short stories than in a novel.

»These Chinese stories are perhaps Darvasi’s best and mysterious work to date.« Eva Haldimann