The Dislocations of Shuang Xuetao

In “Heart,” the opening story of Shuang Xuetao’s collection Hunter, a son accompanies his unconscious father on an ambulance ride at night after a sudden heart attack. The father, a reticent person by nature, has had only one passion during his entire life: boxing. He has had no aspiration to actually fight, but he has trained relentlessly behind closed doors, away from his son and family, and his obsession has seeped into the working of his heart and his “flesh and bones.” As the ambulance speeds to the hospital, the son witnesses his father awaken, curl his hands into fists and box with a phantom opponent, as he has done every day for 40 years, and then die.