Sophie Xiong
Sophie Xiong is a 2011 graduate of Washington and Lee University, where she served as a Shenandoah intern. She is a fiction writer and has recently completed a Johns Hopkins Masters Degree in China.
Reading List
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1989) by Allan Gurganus
Reviewed by Sophie Xiong Recently “epic” has become a grossly misused word due to the trendiness of brash exaggeration. Reading Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (Ivy Books), however, restores the meaning of an epic. Allan Gurganus’ monumental 875-page first …
Under the Red Flag (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1997) by Ha Jin
Terrified and fanatical, the characters in Under the Red Flag run amok. In his collection of short stories, Ha Jin depicts the calamity of mass hysteria, which fueled the delirium in Mao-China’s Cultural Revolution. As a teenager, Jin joined the …
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (Faber and Faber) by Nathan Englander
Recommendation by Sophie Xiong 2012 must be a banner year for Nathan Englander. He has (at long last) come out with his second collection of short stories titled What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, he teamed …