Kingdom of the Glacier Sun

This is the first collection in Hong Zeng's series of short stories: poetic, philosophical, and tinged with magical realism. The collection revolves around the central motif of death, exploring its meanings through imagination, memory, love, and spiritual transformation. Nearly all of the stories are adapted from the author's own creative poetry.Among them, "Kingdom of the Glacier Sun" imagines a world of perpetual youth and immortality, whose allure is ultimately surpassed by the mortal currents of love, longing, suffering, aging, and death. "Days and Nights on the Sea" brings human mortality into sharp relief against the vast, inhuman existence of the ocean. "Lantern Blossoms" captures the moment of spiritual clarity before death, when the self is stripped of desire and fear, as a flame is stripped of smoke."The Weather on the Sea" portrays surrender to death as a peaceful dissolution and a reunion with the beloved. "Museum" embodies memory through the imagined presence of a lover, existing in a perpetual process of becoming. "Between Two Worlds" depicts the mother who, after death, continues to live through the body and consciousness of her daughter. "Pointillist Afternoon" dissolves the world of the dying in the vision of the protagonist through the visual language of Seurat's pointillism, transforming reality into fragments of light and perception."Chess Game" symbolizes the approach of death through the protagonist's game of chess with Death itself. "Echo of Snow" imagines the enduring presence of the departed as echoes beneath a frozen lake. "Whispers in the Tree Buds" conveys the Buddhist understanding that death is already present within every moment of life. "Sunset Clouds" imagines a final encounter with the crystallized being of one's unrealized self before death.Hong Zeng (¿¿¿holds two PhDs in literature and served as a professor of literature at Carleton College and Hamline University in the United States. She is the author of five books of literary criticism published in America, several dozen critical essays on literature, and a bilingual (Chinese-English) poetry collection.