Floating Like the Dead

In this sharply observed and erotically charged debut collection, Journey Prize-winner Yasuko Thanh immerses us in the lives of people on the knife edge of desire and regret, hungry for change yet still yearning for a place to call home, if only for a little while.In a story set in 1960s Germany and crackling with sexual tension, a young woman on the verge of making a life-changing decision is sent to work as a homemaker for a farmer and his family while his wife is away. When his dying lover becomes convinced he is being visited by a ghost, a man is forced to confront his own fears about being left behind. In a Mexican resort town where anything goes, a woman searching for a place to belong pushes herself to the limits of love and despair. And in the Journey Prize-winning story "Floating Like the Dead," a group of Chinese lepers spend their last days dreaming of escape after they are exiled to a remote island off the coast of B.C., at the turn of the twentieth...