The Colonel and the Eunuch: : Mai Jia: Apollo

The Colonel and the Eunuch

Description

The phenomenal #1 Chinese bestseller, with over 4 million copies sold. This is a searing exploration of what makes a hero: a literary masterpiece, available in the English language for the very first time.

The boy grows up in a small village in south China listening to stories about the Colonel: some say he was a legendary army doctor during the war, some say he was a traitor to the Party, still others say he is a wicked sex machine. The stories are bawdy and mesmerizing, always larger than life. Yet in reality, the Colonel is just a middle-aged man who loves his cat. And why on earth does everyone call him 'the Eunuch'?

From these disparate sources, the boy tries to piece together who the Colonel really is, just as he himself grows up in a rapidly changing China. It is not until many years later, when the boy also becomes a middle-aged man, that he would look back and finally solve the puzzle.

Product details

Published	09 May 2024
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	400
ISBN	9781804540268
Imprint	Apollo
Dimensions	229 x 148 mm
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Reading this book is akin to summiting a perilous peak, trekking upwards until a faint path reveals itself, then looking back on the expansive view below... Mai Jia takes many risks, occasionally writing himself into what seem to be impossible situations, but he always dances away from disaster. We fear for him, but then we are forced to admire his skill even more

Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
The novel's disgraced Colonel is emblematic of our parents' generation. The Colonel and the Eunuch is a cello sonata for our fathers

Su Tong, winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize
Mai Jia's masterpiece; it's both perfectly representative of his work, while also being completely different. I think the term 'hypnagogia' – that transitional state between dreams and reality – might be the best one to describe the book

Wong Kar-wai
With its story of great changes across history, its melding of deceitful battlefields with every day life, and its plots and characters that are by turns startling and touching, The Colonel and the Eunuch leads us to an understanding
of the inevitability and frustration of existence. In the end, the hardest code to decipher turns out to be life itself.

David Der-Wei Wang
Uses the mythic adventures of its protagonist to connect the dots of China's 20th century history... In this latest work, Mai Jia, noted for his spy novels, leaves his comfort zone to explore the mysteries of human nature... [A] testament to the author's ambition and commitment to his artform

Southern Metropolis Daily