Empire of Glass

"A portrait of a soul,"Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, finalist for the National Book Award

In the mid-1990s, an American teenager, named Lao K in Chinese, stands on Coal Hill, a park in Beijing, a loop of rope in her hand. Will she assist her Chinese homestay mother, Li-Ming, who is dying of cancer, in ending her life, or will she choose another path? Twenty years later, Lao K receives a book written by Li-Ming called Empire of Glass, a narrative that chronicles the lives of Li-Ming and her husband, Wang, in pre and post-revolutionary China over the last half of the twentieth century. Lao K begins translating the story, which becomes the novel we are reading. But, as translator, how can Lao K separate fact from fiction, and what will her role be in the book s final chapter?

A grand, experimental epicLao K s story is told in footnotes that run throughout the bookthat chronicles the seismic changes in China over the last half century through the lens of one family s experiences, *Empire of Glass* is an investigation into the workings of human memory and the veracity of oral history that pushes the boundaries of language and form in stunning and unforgettable ways.

**Kaitlin Solimine **has been a Fulbright Fellow in China, and has received several scholarships, awards, and residencies for her writing, including the 2012 Dzanc Books/Disquiet International Literary Program award for an earlier draft of *Empire of Glass*, judged by Colson Whitehead. Her fiction has been published in *Guernica*, the *Kartika Review*, and numerous anthologies. Kaitlin is co-founder of HIPPO Reads, a network connecting academic insights and scholars to the wider public. She resides in San Francisco with her husband and daughter, where she is a 2016 SF Grotto Writing Fellow.

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