● Probing the complicated human dimensions through 13 cases of fraud

● A realistic depiction of the daily lives of the Chinese middle and lower classes

This latest collection of short stories and novellas by China's rising-star writer A Yi, contains a total of 13 realistic yet outlandish tales of the strange. The titular novella, A Swindler in the South, depicts the fraud perpetrated upon a southern town by a swindler pretending to be a merchant from Taiwan. After stripping the city of its total wealth, the fraudster escapes unscathed and returns to live among the deceived. The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Magician is the tale of a boy who longs to learn magic and becomes the disciple of a master magician, only to be ruthlessly exploited. The Dregs is the story of a young man who, with the aid of a magical contraption, transmits his life force to his girlfriend so that she may remain eternally young, and loses his own life in the process. Rage draws inspiration from Homer's epics, but the heroes and gods of those tales are replaced by problem students, and rather than the Trojan War, the central conflict of the tale is a scuffle among students in a small-town middle school.

In probing the complex, universal humanity of these hoaxes and frauds, the work depicts with exquisite realism the Chinese middle and lower classes and the daily lives of people in small cities and towns, presenting a plethora of minutely detailed observations of the lives of ordinary folk which always seem to be taking bizarre turns. The tales are brief, yet brimming with appeal.

About the author

A Yi is one of the most talked-about fiction writers in China, dubbed as "the Chinese Franz Kafka". He worked as a police officer before becoming editor-in-chief of Chutzpah. He is the author of two collections of short stories that developed his bizarre literary style and utterly unsentimental worldview. He has published fiction in Granta and the Guardian. In 2010 he was shortlisted for the People's Literature Top 20 Literary Giants of the Future. In 2012, his novel A Perfect Crime was published in China (English edition Oneworld, 2015). Wake Me Up at Nine in the Morning is his latest work, first published in China in 2017, the rights to which have been sold to over 10 countries.