"Cocoon is a stupendous novel, a beautiful and formidable achievement on the grandest scale. Its ruthless psychological realism is wondrously amplified by Zhang Yueran's magical powers of description. Zhang Yueran's scenes and images have an unworldly gleam of both hard-won insight and timeless truth. The novel is a triumph." —IAN McEWAN, author of the international bestseller Atonement "Zhang dazzles with an intricately crafted web of secrets centered on two childhood friends in China. In lyrical prose, Zhang deeply humanizes her leads as they look to the past in an effort to understand themselves. It adds up to a remarkable and tragic story of family and community." —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Cheng Gong and Li Jiaqi go way back. Both hailing from dysfunctional families, they grew up together in a Chinese provincial capital in the 1980s. Now, many years later, the childhood friends reunite and discover how...

Living in the Age of Exploration, a girl named Chunni, went on an adventurous Voyage to Southeast Asia and was caught in a tsunami. she lost her memory and drifted from island to island, suffering from an array of inflictions including abandonment, torture, severe illness, and imprisonment. To search for her lost past, Chunni was willing to devote the rest of her life at any price. The sea bound up her tragic destiny with a number of figures such as pirates, tribal chiefs, eunuchs.