The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Name: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Rating: 4.358 (1755 reviews)
ISBN: 9781481424370

By Ken Liu

Publisher Description

Featured in the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots

Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his multiple award-winning stories for a groundbreaking collection—including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume.

With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This mesmerizing collection features many of Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware” (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalists), “All the Flavors” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie” (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards).

Insightful and stunning stories that plumb the struggle against history and betrayal of relationships in pivotal moments, this collection showcases one of our greatest and original voices.

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The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Reviews

4.0

Aidan McDevitt

Created about 9 hours ago

Bookwyrm

Created about 11 hours ago

“I can’t say everything, because I would review each story and that’s gonna take a while. I will say though, they were all fantastic, and Ken Liu is a brilliant short story writer. The Waves and Mono No Aware were my favorites, but again, they were all amazing. The last one, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary, made me depressed but like….it should. It’s about absolutely horrid events. And the conversation about history and ethics and blah blah was fascinating, I’m gonna need to read it a few more times to fully process it. But yeah. I love this man’s work.”

Jade Borror

Created 3 days ago

Change and grow Memorable Multilayered Steady pacing Well-structured Setting fits the story Vivid descriptions Beautifully-written Easy to read Original

River Duck

Created 4 days ago

“What do I say about such an extraordinary book? It started off squarely in sci-fi, then transitioned into more speculative fiction. I would say almost a majority of the 16 short stories centre on Chinese history and identity. Though this is a downfall: it is hard to recommend this book to someone not interested in historical injustices of Chinese people. Most people will pick up this book thinking it's a collection of sci-fi stories (ie: me). While I enjoyed the sci-fi adventures and the soul-crushing stories that felt like bearing witness to lost pieces of Chinese history, I felt the overall collection lacked cohesion. There were a several stories that were extremely similar, and at times it felt like I was getting hit over the head with the author's opinions on Chinese history. But, his book made me cry real tears, so clearly I still liked this book.”

Memorable Original

Little Bee

Created 5 days ago

“Wow! This was the first book I read in a long time that felt like it was actually trying to SAY something. This book is a collection of short stories by Ken Liu, and though they share themes of immigration, regret, legacy, and more, each story was unique and creative in presentation. I can honestly say I've never seen stories quite like these. Each one is a banger, also, where I had to stop and sit after each conclusion. There was only one story that didn't hit the mark for me, but every other one was thought provoking hit after hit. Often, after a good book, I will get the urge to go back to the beginning of the story and immediately reread. For this collection, that happened with nearly every single story. I only docked points from the one story I didn't like. Otherwise, this book was pretty much perfect to me. It was also structured well - varied in its stories, but cohesive in its themes. There is lots to discuss here for bookclubs.”

Beautifully-written

About Ken Liu

Ken Liu is an award-winning American author of speculative fiction. His collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. Liu’s other works include The Grace of Kings, The Wall of Storms, The Veiled Throne, a second collection The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, and the forthcoming Julia Z series. He has been involved in multiple media adaptations of his work, including the short story “Good Hunting,” adapted as an episode in Netflix’s animated series Love, Death + Robots; and AMC’s Pantheon, adapted from an interconnected series of short stories. “The Hidden Girl,” “The Message,” and “The Oracle” have also been optioned for development. Liu previously worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on topics including futurism, machine-augmented creativity, the history of technology, and the value of storytelling. Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.