A New Yorker Best Book of 2022
An Economist Best Book of 2022

“Engaging, informative and — considering the ground it covers in 135 pages — astonishingly nuanced, The Subplot primes us to dig into [Walsh’s] list of suggested further reading.” —The Wall Street Journal

“A lively, lucid survey of contemporary Chinese fiction.... Walsh delivers a wry cornucopia, inviting for general readers who don’t know Mo Yan from Han Han.” —The New York Times

“Illuminating...offers a superb introduction to Chinese publishing and the clever, subversive ways it’s thriving.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“A wonderful, pacy tour of contemporary Chinese literature.” —The Economist

“A portal into people’s hearts and minds by exploring contemporary Chinese literature.” —GlobalAsia

“Concise and fast-paced.... The Subplot will make you want to read more Chinese fiction.” —The New Statesman

“An illuminating insight into the web fiction, sci-fi and subtle dissent read by one-fifth of humanity.” —Financial Times

“A sharp, revealing portrait of contemporary China.... Elegantly written and fascinating.” —Adam Foulds, author of The Quickening Maze

“An eye-opening glimpse into China’s ‘intentionally hazy’ authoritarian political climate of censorship and propaganda…. A succinct, fascinating overview of literary ambivalence in China.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Drawing on a rich field of research, The Subplot not only crosses the language barrier, opening a window for the world to see contemporary Chinese literature, but it could also be an invaluable record for young Chinese people, both in China and overseas, to think about how society is affected by China's fast-pace of change.” —Xinran, author of The Good Women of China

“In The Subplot, Megan Walsh showcases the diversity and vitality of contemporary Chinese literature. With economy and wit, she shows us why it’s so necessary to read literature to understand the story of China today.” —Angie Baecker, University of Hong Kong

“A jaw-dropping look at what mainland Chinese are reading right now. Megan Walsh tells us why, in this time of China’s economic ascension, its literature is both liberating—and soul-crushing.” —Jan Wong, author of Red China Blues

“We are what we read. As China is rising, people are naturally interested in what the Chinese are reading. This overview of the literature in China offers an interesting perspective of a country that is reshaping the world.” —Lijia Zhang, author of the novel Lotus and of Socialism Is Great!: A Worker’s Memoir of China

2021-11-04
The gripping yet uneasy state of literature in China.

Journalist Walsh’s first book is an eye-opening glimpse into China’s “intentionally hazy” authoritarian political climate of censorship and propaganda, which disorientates its fiction scene—a “mixture of staggering invention, bravery, and humanity, as well as soul-crushing submission and pragmatism.” China is in the midst of a science-fiction golden age thanks to novels like Liu Cixin’s global bestseller, The Three-Body Problem(2015), among others. Walsh describes how many young writers embrace online or self-publishing to bypass China’s state-controlled publishing program as they “reveal the truth and highlight what is still hidden.” Mo Yan, the Nobel Prize–winning author, is both praised and condemned as a mouthpiece for the state; Walsh calls his fiction “garrulous, feverish, and often smutty.” Female author Wei Hui’s 1999 erotic bestseller, Shanghai Baby, showed that in “China’s new market economy sex and controversy were great for business.” The rise of China’s internet and its rural migrant workers spawned the most comprehensive poetry movement in the world, while Lu Yao’s novels portrayed “poor, rural idealists dreaming up a new life in the city.” Walsh chronicles how hugely popular, escapist online fantasy novels reveal the “mercenary, amoral instincts of the market.” The government has cashed in with its own University of Online Fiction, with Mo Yan “nominally at the helm, a move he finds as peculiar as anyone else.” Largely dominated by Japanese manga, China has “become the biggest comic book market in the world,” with its underground comics scene providing a transgressive and masochistic view of the world. Tibetan and Han Chinese writers, writes Walsh, “have played a controversial role in both the elevation and erosion of ethnic difference.” In a society with a draconian legal system, crime fiction lags far behind SF. As Walsh cautiously writes, it’s “hard to say what the future holds.”

A succinct, fascinating overview of literary ambivalence in China.