In this avant garde masterpiece, memory is a fluid concept. The protagonist, a writer, is at a publisher-sponsored retreat to finish his novel. The beauty of the location however cannot compensate for the anxiety and hallucinations he experiences while watching a flock of brown birds pass by his window, and his sense of temporal disorientation is further compounded by the appearance of a strange woman who calls him Ge Fei. Fiction and reality blend into one as the story unfolds. Ge Fei’s prose renders in exquisite detail the fragility of time.

"It is impossible to enter the deeper aspects of contemporary Chinese literature without also entering the world of Ge Fei." - Enrique Vila-Matas