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In the Watchful City

In the Watchful City

Science FictionLiterary Fiction
Pages
192
Published
2021
Language
English

Synopsis

Anima is a "node," part of a living surveillance network called the Gleaming that watches over and protects the isolated city-state of Ora. When a mysterious outsider arrives carrying a cabinet of curiosities, each object paired with a story from somewhere beyond the city's borders, Anima's cloistered understanding of the world expands into possibilities never before imagined.

Told through four interwoven stories brought in by travelers, In the Watchful City is a literary science-fantasy novella about surveillance, isolation, and identity, influenced by Calvino's nested-storytelling tradition.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

Thought-ProvokingAtmosphericMysteriousDreamy

Genres

Science Fiction Literary Fiction Dystopian

About the author

S
S. Qiouyi Lu

S. Qiouyi Lu is a Chinese-American writer, translator, and editor based in Los Angeles who works across speculative fiction, poetry, and essays. They edit the magazine Arsenika and run the microfiction project microverses. Their debut novella, In the Watchful City, tells an interlinked, multi-genre story of borders and transformation centered on queer characters in a secondary world drawing on Asian cultures.

Characters

AnimaProtagonist

An extrasensory node embedded in Ora's surveillance network, whose worldview expands through the stories of outside visitors.

All characters in In the Watchful City