A poetic and unflinching fable about tyranny, guilt, and the erasure of history, by the banned Chinese writer hailed as ‘China’s Solzhenitsyn’.In seven dream-like episodes, Ma Jian charts the psychological disintegration of a Chinese provincial leader who is haunted by nightmares of his violent past. From exile, Ma Jian shoots an arrow at President Xi Jinping’s ‘China Dream’ propaganda, creating a biting satire of totalitarianism that reveals what happens to a nation when it is blinded by materialism and governed by violence and lies. Blending tragic and absurd reality with myth and fantasy, this dystopian novel is a portrait not of an imagined future, but of China today.PRAISE FOR MA JIAN'S WORK‘A landmark work of fiction’ Daily Telegraph‘Worthy of Swift or Orwell’ Observer‘A modern literary masterpiece’ Sunday Express‘Monumental . . . Riveting . . . A mighty gesture of remembrance against the encroaching forces of silence’ Guardian‘A born storyteller who has the artistry and intellect to evoke a staggeringly large and densely peopled world. His language is precise and sublimely visual; it is painfully funny’ Madeleine Thien‘In scene after scene of black satire, lyric tenderness and desolating tragedy . . . this fearless epic of history and memory establishes Ma Jian as the Solzhenitsyn of China’s forgetful drive towards world domination’ Independent‘Ma Jian has accomplished something extremely difficult. That is, he has created a work of art that functions simultaneously as literature and call to action’ New York Review of Books