Short Classics

Short Classics is a series of foreign short-story collections planned and published jointly since 2011 by Shanghai 99 Readers and People's Literature Publishing House (with some early titles in cooperation with Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House). The general planner is Huang Yuhai, and the early planning team also included editors Peng Lun and He Jiawei. The series focuses on representative short-story collections by modern and contemporary masters of world literature, renowned short-story writers, and important emerging authors. Its inaugural title was the Chinese edition of British writer Simon Van Booy's Love Begins in Winter, launched in March 2011. Since then it has published short-story works by authors including Cortázar, Carver, Dürrenmatt, John Updike, William Trevor, Colm Tóibín, Mukoda Kuniko, Miyamoto Teru, Claire Keegan, Ron Rash, and Adichie, with authors from nearly twenty countries across Europe, the Americas, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The series is instantly recognizable for its solid-color covers, uniform trim size, and minimalist belly bands. It is one of the largest and longest-running short-story series in China, with more than eighty titles published by around 2018, and has spawned sub-series such as Short Classics Select, Short Classics Library Edition, and Chinese Short Classics. Each volume is a standalone short-story collection by a single author and can be bought and read on its own.