Even though he has been translated widely in European languages - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a fan - the first volume of Li Er's work in English was published only recently, by the Hong Kong-based Make Do Publishing.

It's a slim volume, containing just two pieces - The Magician of 1919 and Christmas Eve - in addition to a foreword by the author and an interview by Jane Weizhen Pan, who has co-translated the stories with Martin Merz.

Between them, the two stories "stand at the two ends of Li's range", publisher Harvey Thomlinson says.

The Magician - set in the wake of the May Fourth Movement in 1919 that saw the rise of nationalistic sentiment, leading to the emergence of the Communist Party of China in 1921 - is a highly stylized account of the predicament of a creative artist-intellectual in revolutionary times.

Christmas Eve is less ambitious. It's a wistful tale about an old man relegated to the role of a pimp who has a change of heart and acts against his grain. The setting - a city awash with festive lights - is fairytale-like, and so is the treatment. Old Mr Chin is almost reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's Little Match Girl in his sudden impulse for altruism and self-sacrifice.

"Li is one of the most political writers in China, without appearing to be overtly so," Thomlinson says.

Translator Martin Merz, who finds resonances of Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek's reluctant hero in The Good Soldier Svejk in Li's magician, Bigshot Cowrie, agrees.

"The humor is a vehicle for Li to tackle serious issues," he says, charmed by the "layers of meaning" embedded in the text, even as he tried capturing its "playful lilt".

There is, in fact, inspiration closer home for Li, in Lu Xun's The True Story of Ah Q (1921), which is like a pantomime, a bizarre caricature, of the new awakening and culture movement in 1919.

Li agrees. "It's about responding to the loss of things," he says.