Reading :: 7pm, Thursday, August 25, 2011
Venue :: Atrium of The Opposite House
[limited seating available to the first 40 guests]
Where is ‘home’? Does an adopted one matter? Who’s adopting whom? In these eleven richly varied stories, set in and around a Beijing railway station, in a downtown Toronto neighborhood, in Berlin and Buchenwald, in England and in Romania, Fatty Goes to China explores the precarious lives of an accident-prone Chinese construction worker with a dark and violent secret, a Romanian carpenter with a ‘deathcamp hangover’ who finds that his teddy-bear named ‘Seriously’ is his harshest critic, a fatally ill Canadian artist who remains in Beijing after the 2008 Olympics and develops a surprising friendship, a teenaged KFC waitress who is tricked by an American student, a malingering heir who visits his childhood home in England for “the shoebox,” a grieving barber who, after risking his life, makes a gruesome discovery about his Czech lover, and a Chinese couple who make a shocking, last-minute decision about their adoptive child. Written in original, humorous, and innovative ways, these unforgettable narratives expose the risks in finding shelter in unaccommodating places.
Royston Tester [roystontester.com], is a British-Canadian short story writer who is currently an artist-in-residence at Red Gate [redgateresidency.com]. He is also the guest-editor for Hong Kong based Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. Tester’s short story, ‘A Beijing Minute,’ to be read at The Opposite House, is from Fatty Goes to China, and has recently been published in the Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore.
This event is organized by Red Gate Gallery in collaboration with The Opposite House, Beijing.
Address
The Opposite House, 11 Sanlitun Rd, Chaoyang, Beijing
tel/fax: +86 6417 6688
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