The Brooklyn Rail

MU XIN (1927-2011), pen name, is a renowned Chinese diasporan writer and artist who published more than a dozen of books of fiction, poetry and prose in his lifetime, and wrote most of them while he lived in the New York area from 1984 till 2005. Born into a wealthy aristocratic family in Wuzhen, South China, he was among the last generation to receive a classical education in the literati tradition, but was also exposed through voluminous reading to the highest achievements of Western art and culture.

Translator TOMING JUN LIU is the pen name of Liu Jun. Liu was born in Xi'an, China, and is a professor of English at California State University, Los Angeles, where he teaches American and European modern literature, diasporic literature and critical theory. Liu's translation of Mu Xin's collection of fiction An Empty Room: Stories was published by New Directions in 2011, the first book by Mu Xin in English. This English version of "SOS" has never been published before.