Description
A dazzling literary thriller set in Japan-occupied China from the most translated Chinese novelist of our time.
About the Author
Mai Jia's first novel in English, Decoded, was published by Penguin Classics in 2002, and has been translated into over twenty languages. His novels have sold over 10 million copies and Mai Jia has won the Mao Dun Literature Prize, the highest literary honour in China. The Message was first published in 2007 and has sold over a million copies in China. Mai Jia was born in 1964 and spent many years in the Chinese intelligence services.
Reviews
This is a spy novel on a grand scale in which nothing is at seems... This slyly playful narrative makes it clear, all that really matters is the storytelling. Give it a little time and The Message will draw you into a deliciously sticky web' * The Times *
A fascinating play on history, loyalty, logic and coded puzzles and the setting, and point of view, will certainly be unusual to European readers * Shots Magazine *
In this readably spry translation, Jia's playful mix of tradecraft, puzzle-solving and human folly brings an original twist to the spy fiction canon * Sunday Times *
War dramas, with their hackneyed plots and cliched characters, are popular in the mainland. The Message, though, uses the war as cover to refer to the horrors of communist rule, particularly but not exclusively from The Cultural Revolution * South China Morning Post *
The intensity of the struggle between the antagonists and the subtlety of their contest builds to a gripping conclusion * Crime Review *
Book Information
ISBN 9781789543032
Author Mai Jia
Format Paperback
Page Count 432
Imprint Apollo
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC