She has also written novels, novellas, and literary criticism of Dante, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka.

She was one of six children born to a man who was once the editor-in-chief of the New Hunan Daily (Chinese: 新湖南日报; pinyin: Xīn Húnán Rìbào).

Two years later, the entire family was evicted from the company housing at the newspaper and moved to a tiny hut below the Yuelu Mountain, on the rural outskirts of Changsha.

[1][3] Can Xue describes the horrors of her youth in detail in her memoirs titled "A Summer Day in the Beautiful South" which is included as the foreword to her short story collection Dialogues in Paradise.

Her grandmother, who raised her while her parents were gone, soon succumbed to hunger and fatigue, dying with severe edema, a grotesque swelling condition.

While the family was forced to scavenge food, eventually eating all of the wool clothes in the house, Can Xue contracted a severe case of tuberculosis.

Two other short stories followed that year, "The Bull" (公牛) and "The Hut on the Hill",[1][5] at which point she chose the pen name Can Xue.

[6]) Not only was she writing avant-garde fiction, but she was also a woman; male writers and critics attempted to analyze her works by psychoanalysis of the author, and some even suggested she was certifiably insane.

There is no organized system of correspondence or meaning within it that would allow individual elements to be explained back into the realm of the logical.

However, the reviewer still described the experience of reading the author's books as rewarding, explaining that the tools of literature used in experimental writing to chart the human being extend beyond the capacities of language as logic.

[2] American novelist and editor Bradford Morrow has described her as one of the most "innovative and important" authors in contemporary world literature.

[14] Can Xue has published a large number of novels, novellas, short stories, and book-length commentaries, many of which have been translated into English.