A letter-writing campaign goes awry when a law is passed that only allows people to walk the streets at night, if they maintain a squatting position at all times...A town is overrun with cockroaches; despite the government’s official expressions of concern, the only person doing anything about it is branded an agitator...A widower is forced to move into the city to live with his son, bringing his cat and his strange country ways with him...Diao Dou’s short stories p...

****Selected as one of the Financial Times Best Books of 2012** **Featuring:AUTHORS: Jie Chen, Han Dong, Diao Dou, Cau Kou, Ding Liying, Ho Sin Tung, Yi Sha, Zhu Wen, Xu Zechen and Zhang Zhihao.‘Everyone in the whole country knew this place was full of money, you only had to bend down and pick it up; everyone in the whole country also knew that opportunity here was like bird shit – while you weren’t looking it would spatter on your ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAn extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom.As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and...

**"Dark, gorgeous…feels authentically Chinese and it works like a charm." --Washington Post Book World on A Case of Two CitiesChief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is offered a bit of luxury by friends and supporters within the Party – a week's vacation at a luxurious resort near Lake Tai, a week where he can relax, and recover, undisturbed by outside demands or disruptions. Unfortunately, the once beautiful Lake Tai, renowned for its...

In the tradition of The Concubine's Children and Paper Shadows, a probing memoir from the author of the acclaimed novel Midnight at the Dragon Cafe.An elegant and surprising book about a Chinese family's difficult arrival in Canada, and a daughter's search to understand remarkable and terrible truths about her parents' past lives.Growing up in her father's hand laundry in small town Ontario, Judy Fong Bates listened to stories of ...

When the murder of a woman is reported to the Shanghai police while Inspector Chen is on vacation, Sergeant Yu is forced to take charge of the investigation. The victim, Yin Lige, a novelist known for her banned book, has been found dead in her tiny, humble room off the stairwell of a converted multi-family house. It seems that only a neighbor could have committed the crime, for the building is kept locked at night. But there is no apparent motive. Sergeant Yu tries to unravel the reclusiv...

A "suspenseful, elegantly written" account of the author's return to China after thirty years to search for the woman she betrayed to the authorities ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).In the early 1970s, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Jan Wong traveled from Canada to Beijing University—where she would become one of only two Westerners permitted to study. One day a fellow student, Yin Luoyi, asked for her help getting to the United States....

**A NEW YORK TIMES TOP BOOK OF THE YEARWASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK“Mo Yan’s voice will find it’s way into the heart of the American reader, just as Kundera and García Márquez have.” —Amy Tan author of The Joy Luck ClubFrom the Nobel-prize winning author of Red Sorghum and one China’s most revered writers, a novel exploring the One-Child Policy**Before the Cultural Revolution, Gugu, narrator Tadpole’s feisty aunt, is a resp...

Number Four will have a difficult life. These are the words that were uttered upon Ting-xing Ye's birth. Soon this prophecy would prove only too true. . . .Here is the real-life story about the fourth child in a family torn apart by China's Cultural Revolution. After the death of both of her parents, Ting-xing and her siblings endured brutal Red Guard attacks on their schools and even in their home. At the age of sixteen, Ting-xing is exiled to a prison farm far from the wo...

In 2006, the Prime Minister apologized to the Chinese people for the legislated discrimination created by Canada’s head tax laws in the first half of the twentieth century, acknowledging the far-reaching and long-term consequences it has had on their families. A Cowherd in Paradise is the story of one such family.The book chronicles the remarkable lives of Wong Guey Dang (1902–1983) and Jiang Tew Thloo (1911–2002). Ah Dang was born into an impoverished family and sold as a...

One of the best ways to understand history is through eye-witness accounts. Ting-Xing Ye’s riveting first book, A Leaf in the Bitter Wind, is a memoir of growing up in Maoist China. It was an astonishing coming of age through the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1974).In the wave of revolutionary fervour, peasants neglected their crops, exacerbating the widespread hunger. While Ting-Xing was a young girl in Shanghai, her father’s rubber factory was exprop...

It's 1872 and China – still bruised from its defeat in the two Opium Wars – sends a group of boys, including seven-year-old Chen Mu, to America to study and bring back the secrets of the West. But nine years on Chen Mu becomes a fugitive and flees to Umberumberka, a mining town in outback Australia. He eventually finds peace working for Matthew Dawson, a rich pastoralist.When the bubonic plague ravages Sydney, Matthew Dawson's daughter returns to her father's property with her son,...