Fiction in translation: City Like Water; Women Without Men; X is Where I Am; You Are the Fuhrer’s Unrequited Love

Cities loom large in fiction, whether tangible like Joyce’s Dublin and Hans Fallada’s Berlin, or imagined as in Jan Morris’ Last Letters from Hav. In Dorothy Tse’s City Like Water, translated by Natascha Bruce (Fitzcarraldo Editions, £12.99), the unnamed city is both real and surreal: it is identifiably Hong Kong, but it is elusive and mysterious, like the nightmarish cityscapes of China Miéville. Our young narrator lives in an authoritarian city state governed by “the Law”, where streets disappear from maps, days from calendars, classmates from schoolrooms, and whole floors from hotels. The television spews lies, while an “internet black…