“Qiu Luo had always anticipated that she would have insomnia on the final night. This, however, was not the case…”

Set in 2008, Home tells the story of a confused, middle class young couple living in Beijing. The two partners deserted each other coincidentally on the same day, without notifying each other or anyone else of their departures, embarking on their respective journeys of self-exploration. They unknowingly left their home to their maid, a young woman from Sichuan, the Chinese province that was hit by a devastating earthquake later that year. It remains to be seen how this bewildering story of suspense and coincidence unfolds…

Home has been written by Zhang Yueran, one of the most famous Chinese writers born in 1980s. Translated by Geng Song, the short story has been selected from the book The Sound of Salt Forming – Short Stories by the Post-'80s Generation in China, published by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in 2016.