Like Gary Shteyngart or Michel Houellebecq, Wang Xiaobo is a Chinese literary icon whose satire forces us to reconsider the ironies of history.

“Apparently, there was a rumour that Chen Qingyang and I were having an affair. She wanted me to prove our innocence. I said, to prove our innocence, we must prove one of the following:

1. Chen Qingyang is a virgin;
2. I was born without a penis. Both of these propositions were hard to prove, therefore, we couldn’t prove our innocence. Infact, I was leaning more toward proving that we weren’t innocent.”

And so begins Wang Er’s story of his long affair with Chen Qinyang. Wang Er, a 21-year-old ox herder, is shamed by the local authorities and forced to write a confession for his crimes but instead, takes it upon himself to write a modernist literary tra ...Read More