About
Annelise Finegan translates contemporary Chinese literature across genres. Her translations have received the Best Translated Book Award for Fiction and the PEN Translates Award, as well as being longlisted for the International Booker Prize, the National Translation Award (US), and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (UK). Currently academic director and clinical associate professor of translation at New York University, Annelise has also worked for academic and textbook publishers as an acquisitions editor, publishing coordinator, copy editor, and project manager. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis.
Featured Work
The Enchanting Lives of Others
A celebration of the beguiling power of literature, from one of the world’s greatest storytellers
A New Yorker Most Anticipated Book of 2026
Irish Times, Best Fiction of 2026 to Look Forward To
At the Pigeon Book Club, a circle of readers gathers for exhilarating meetings to discuss literature. The only requirements for entry are an all-encompassing love of books and the intuition that to read is to love and to love is to read. Xiao Sang, a department store clerk, wonders if life can ever be as captivating as a novel. Newlyweds Fei and Han Ma struggle to build a marriage as Han Ma discovers a surprising gift for storytelling. Xiao Ma, a hopeful dreamer, explores the possibility of romance with an older man. Bound by a shared passion for fiction, each book club member seeks to understand the relationship between the stories they read and the lives they lead, reveling in both the quotidian details and the ecstasy of aesthetics.
This is the most accessible work yet from the celebrated writer Can Xue: a utopian comedy and a work of profound joy, a love song to literary inspiration and the remarkable beauty of the ordinary. The Enchanting Lives of Others explores what it means to know and be known to others through the transformative power of reading.
