Susan Barker

Susan Barker grew up in east London and lived in Beijing for several years. She is the author of the novels Sayonara Bar and The Orientalist and the Ghost, both longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. The Incarnations, published in 2014 by Doubleday, is her third novel

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The Sixth Life of Driver Wang

AN EXCERPT FROM THE INCARNATIONS, A NOVEL BY SUSAN BARKER

 


Through the windscreen of his taxi, Wang has seen the city change. He has seen the wrecking balls swing, bulldozers levelling streets to rubble and dust and skyscrapers rising like bamboo after the rain. Land and planning permission is bought and sold. Property developers draw circles on maps and, in weeks, all that is circled disappears; the residents exiled to the far-flung suburbs and demolition crews moving in to clear out the rest. In the decade Wang has been a taxi driver, the city has changed radically. And as the dust of construction gusts across the city, sheet after sheet, he often wonders when it will end.

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