The Fat Years: A Novel
Banned in China but sought after, read, and commented on in pirated online versions, Koonchung’s first novel to be translated into English is a novel of ideas in which the principal idea is: what’s wrong with not having any? Set mainly in Beijing, the novel gives us China after a second global financial crisis: the economy is booming, the population is complacent, and the country appears destined to achieve world domination. Everyone seems to have forgotten a month of civil unrest and a vicious state-sponsored crackdown, as if the population awoke from the nightmare of history and found it so implausible that they forgot or dismissed it. We are treated to characters from a cross-section of society, a love story, and the trappings of a thriller. A long, highly theoretical dissection of China’s politics and economy closes the book, and will undoubtedly try the patience of people reading strictly for pleasure. Then again, that may be the novel’s purpose: boring economic minutiae may well require our urgent attention. --Michael Autrey