The Fat Years

A Novel

By: Chan Koonchung

Narrated by: David Tse

Banned in China, this controversial and politically charged novel tells the story of the search for an entire month erased from official Chinese history.

Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one could care less—except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that have possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn—not only about their leaders, but also about their own people—stuns them to the core. It is a message that will astound the world.

A kind of Brave New World reflecting the China of our times, The Fat Years is a complex novel of ideas that reveals all too chillingly the machinations of the postmodern totalitarian state, and sets in sharp relief the importance of remembering the past to protect the future.

Brilliant Novel!!!

Chan Koonchung illuminates contemporary China by contrasting the profoundly idealists figures with the pragmatic aims of the Chinese state and communist party. As the author argues, this novel is not dystopian fiction, but it starkly reveal the dark political, social and economic realities of capitalism without the rule of law.

Eye-opening

I really loved this book way more than I thought. The content is superb and the reading was exquisite.