A startlingly original voice announces itself immediately in this collection of award-winning stories. Tao Lin's absorbing writing style matches a minimalist prose with a lyric sensibility, poignant compassion with a hysterical sense of humor, bitter reality with enchanting fantasy, and youthful outlandishness with a gentle, mature perceptiveness - all in shaped stories that are a tribute to the form.

In a series of pinpoint portrayals, Lin's tales depict young people in a surreal place between irresponsible youth and workaday adulthood, wanting to reject both cultures in order to craft something different. But such rebellion is harder than ever in a culture dominated by outrageousness, and Lin sensitively portrays the struggle in a way that is highly entertaining, impressively smart, and ultimately moving.

It will leave some cheering the war against a dumbed-down culture, others laughing at the tactics, and all concerned feeling like they've got a new champion in Tao Lin.