​About the Book:

​Contaminated by literature and compelled by the impossibility of translating one another, two young lovers fall in love against their better judgment in Sienna Liu’s polyvocal book-length essay Specimen.

Through meetings and missives from Cape Town to Beijing to Paris to London, the lovers lie, fight, observe and analyze, write and re-write themselves for one another, only to find that their carefully constructed narrative has obtained a life of its own which overshadows and usurps their relationship. Weaving together years of diaries, notes, text messages, and memory, Specimen is an exploration of diaspora, nostalgia, writing, the creation of oneself through another, and time itself.

​在Sienna Liu的长篇散文《Specimen》(标本) 中，一对年轻恋人受到文学作品污染，又因无法翻译彼此，明知不可为，却坠入爱河。

从开普敦到北京，从巴黎到伦敦，这对恋人在数次会面和书信往来之中，彼此欺骗、争吵、观察、分析，为彼此书写、重写自己，却发现他们精心构建的叙事拥有了生命，遮蔽并篡夺了他们的关系。《Specimen》将多年的日记、笔记、短信和记忆交织在一起，探索了离散、怀旧、写作、通过他人创造自我以及时间本身。

​About the Author:

​Sienna Liu is a writer and literary translator living in New York City. She is the author of the book-length essay Specimen (Split/Lip Press, forthcoming in 2025), the novel Food Porn (Game Over Books, 2024), and the poetry chapbook Square (Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, 2022). Her English-to-Chinese translations include Rachel Cusk's Second Place (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2023), Claire-Louise Bennett's Checkout 19 (forthcoming), Ali Smith's Companion Piece (forthcoming), and a new translation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (forthcoming).

​Sienna Liu是一位居住在纽约市的作家兼文学翻译家。她著有长篇散文《Specimen》（Split/Lip出版社，将于2025年出版）、小说《Food Porn》（Game Over Books出版社，2024年出版）以及袖珍诗集《Square》（Black Sunflowers Poetry Press出版社，2022年出版）。她的英译中作品包括Rachel Cusk的《第二处》（Second Place）（广西师范大学出版社，2023年出版）、Claire-Louise Bennett的《Checkout 19》（即将出版）、Ali Smith的《Companion Piece》（即将出版）以及弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫《达洛维夫人》的新译本（即将出版）。