We are very pleased to welcome Xuemo, another prize-winning author, into this new volume of Chinese Literature and Culture, which consists of excerpts of The Curse of Western Xia and excerpts of The Love Letters of Sharwardi in excellent English translation as well as two book reviews: Robert Tindol on the novel Desert Rites and Stephen Rake on the novel Desert Hunters. An author should have character and Xuemo is certainly the type we are looking...