Mo Yin returns to fiction with a craftsman's heart... The plural 'her' comes from her translations, her stories, and the world she lives in daily.
— He Ping, Critic

A vague yet perfectly fitting sadness is pressed deep into the memory of the era Mo Yin experienced. She restores the inevitable, subtle bitterness between fiction and non-fiction.
— Zhang Yiwei, Writer

Mo Yin possesses a self-consistency similar to Haruki Murakami. She writes and translates regularly, anchoring her own stable values independent of external evaluation systems.
— "People" Magazine

★ Selected for Douban's 2025 Annual Reading List for Chinese Fiction; rated 8.0/10!
★ The latest short story collection by novelist and Japanese translator Mo Yin, featuring six diverse works spanning vastly different eras.
★ Six stories, six timelines. From Shanghai to Tokyo, from the near future to the millennium, it captures the destinies of six women. Facing their own dilemmas, they seek confirmation and redemption through free will and love.
★ "Salute to free will; will ultimately triumph over fate's arrangements."
The female characters do not defeat fate, but their exercise of will in every small choice is, in itself, an act of resistance.

"Her Life" is a new collection of novellas and short stories by Mo Yin, comprising six works: "Shanghai Night," "Summer on the Other Shore," "Dream City," "Bamboo Has No Heart," "The Person in the Closet," and "The Moon in the Tongue."

"Shanghai Night," writing what one truly desires is the ultimate revenge.
"Summer on the Other Shore" follows a search for life's exit under the neon lights of Tokyo.
"Dream City" portrays life as a pre-scripted dream where everyone plays their part.
"Bamboo Has No Heart" uses memory as a river leading back to one's true self.
"The Person in the Closet" asks whose secrets are hidden in the closets of youth.
"The Moon in the Tongue" reveals life's truth as love fades.

Mo Yin gathers these "hers" from texts, experiences, and elsewhere, weaving them into her fictional world. In her stories, protagonists walk from Shanghai to Tokyo, and from the future back to the millennium. Some mature overnight in the fog of youth; others remain as helpless as infants in the quagmire of marriage. Almost every "her" faces injustice, violence, and the fate of being left behind. Yet, armed with free will and the experience of love, they find a layer of confirmation amidst the impermanence of a thousand different lives.

Mo Yin
A novelist and Japanese translator, born in Yunnan in 1980, she relocated to Shanghai in her youth. She published her first story in "Science Fiction World" at age 16, winning the "Young Jules Verne Award" for her debut "Flower Soul." She graduated from the Japanese Department of Shanghai International Studies University.

Her published novels include "Jia Ma," "Stars in the Abyss," "Sixty Springs in One Word," and "The Follower." "Stars in the Abyss" was shortlisted for the 2021 BaoPu Ideal Country Literature Award. "Auntie's Four Seasons" won the Shanghai Writers Association's 2015 Outstanding Long Fiction Award.
She has also translated numerous Japanese literary works, including "The Convenience Store in Mahoro," "Snow's Apprentice," and "The Normal Temperature of Kyoto."

Shanghai Nights 001
Summer on the Other Shore 061
Dream City 117
Bamboo Has No Heart 181
The Person in the Closet 259
The Moon in the Tongue 311
Afterword: The Necessity of Reshaping Memory 344