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Look Inside. Jan 10, Minutes Buy. An entire month has gone missing from Chinese records. No one has any memory of it, and no one seems to The Fat Years 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 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. The Fat Years is The Fat Years 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 in order to protect the future. Banned in China, The Fat Years 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. 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 The Fat Years 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. He has published more than a dozen Chinese-language books and in… More about Chan Koonchung. It tells stunning truths that those authorities strive hard to keep under the rug, and it tells them with a literary flair worthy of Orwell. When you buy a book, we donate a book. Sign in. The Best Books of So Far. Read An Excerpt. Jan 08, ISBN Add to Cart. Also available from:. Jan The Fat Years, ISBN Available from:. Audiobook Download. Paperback —. About The Fat Years Banned in China, this controversial and politically charged novel tells the story of the search for an entire month erased from official Chinese history. Product Details. Inspired by Your Browsing History. Esmeralda Santiago. The Attack. Yasmina Khadra. Tom Clancy SSN. Martin Greenberg and Tom Clancy. The Black Book. John J. At Play in the Fields of the The Fat Years. Peter Matthiessen. The Surrendered. Chang-rae Lee. The Second Saladin. Stephen Hunter. Firing Point. George Wallace and Don Keith. Big Machine. Victor LaValle. Black Sunday. Thomas Harris. Balance of Power. Richard North Patterson. The Watch. Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya. Frederick Forsyth. The Eiger Sanction. They Would Never Hurt a Fly. Slavenka Drakulic. Everything Matters! The Icarus Agenda. Robert Ludlum. The Last Ship. William Brinkley. Battle Born. Second Strike. Peter Kirsanow. Betool Khedairi. Rogue Strike. David Ricciardi. Mark Greaney. The Tin Man. The Sound of Things Falling. Juan Gabriel Vasquez. Bring Out the Dog. Thomas Mallon. Toni Cade Bambara. Star of the North. United States of Jihad. Peter Bergen. Related Articles. Looking for More Great Reads? Download Hi The Fat Years. LitFlash The eBooks you The Fat Years at the lowest prices. Read The Fat Years Forward Read it first. Pass The Fat Years on! Stay in Touch Sign up. We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please try again later. Become a Member Start earning points for buying books! The Fat Years by Chan Koonchung

The novel is set in the near future ofwhere China has entered a "Golden Age of Ascendancy," while Western nations have stagnated after a second economic crisis in early Lao Chen, a Hong Kong expatriate and writer living in Beijingfinds himself enjoying the atmosphere of prosperity and contentment. Though suffering from writer's blockhe The Fat Years a modest living off renting apartments and attends monthly film screenings held at a restaurant owned by his friend Jian Lin and attended by an insomniac Politburo member named He Dongsheng. Lao gradually find himself pulled into events by his old friend Fang Caodi, who is frantically searching for the missing month of February with official records and public memory jumping from January to Marchand his former flame Wei The Fat Years known as "Little Xi"a former public security bureau lawyer who now acts as an Internet activist. Lao's feelings of contentment begin to vanish as he listens to Wei and Fang's partial The Fat Years of February and discovers that any available literature about the Cultural Revolution and political issues of the s including the Tiananmen Square protests of are either highly sanitized or unavailable. Lao and Fang eventually follow Wei to the township of Warm Springs, where she is helping a house church negotiate with the local government. After Lao confesses his love to Wei, they return to Beijing. After another film screening at Jian's restaurant, Lao is inadvertently pulled into a kidnapping of He The Fat Years by Fang, Wei, and Zhang Dou an aspiring guitarist who also recalls Februarywho are determined to understand the meaning of the missing month. After Dongsheng and the others agree their situation means they will " live or die together " with Dongsheng's disappearance automatically throwing The Fat Years onto Lao, but Dongsheng admitting his kidnapping would throw cause suspicion of revealing state secretsthey begin to discuss China's present The Fat Years. Dongsheng explains that, with growing challenges to the Communist Party's legitimacy and authority, the decision was made in the midst of the The Fat Years crisis to enact his "Action Plan for Ruling the Nation and Pacifying the World. The restoration of order and ensuing The Fat Years helped cement the necessity of the Communist Party in the public mind. Dongsheng further explains that the Chinese government was The Fat Years to save their economy with intrusive measures such as the conversion of large percentages of national bank savings accounts to expiring vouchers ; large-scale deregulation ; strengthening property rights ; crackdowns on corruptioncounterfeit consumer goodsand " misinformation ," and price controls citing those by Walther Rathenau in World War I Germany and in World War II America. This is coupled with a foreign The Fat Years calling for a "Chinese Monroe Doctrine ," with East Asia developing under Chinese direction; advocating non-interventionist economic cooperation and political stability in Africathe Middle Eastand Central Asia ; and even signing The Fat Years non-aggression pact with Japan. Backing up these challenges to American hegemony is a The Fat Years " first use " nuclear weapons policy. Dongsheng even reveals that the general The Fat Years of contentment is due to the controlled addition of the drug MDMA into the public's drinking water and bottled drinks and that the missing month of February is The Fat Years a case of social amnesia. After unsuccessfully arguing with Dongsheng over the benefits of liberal democracyFang, Zhang, Wei, and Lao release him and part ways in the early morning. The book has been banned in mainland China[2] in a article on the Huffington Post the author explained that "when my novel, 'The Fat Years,' was published in Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan insome publishers in the mainland China approached me. I told them to read the novel first and then we would talk. None of them came back. Well, one did come back, but for the rights to an earlier novel of mine - a novella about Hong Kong. So officially, 'The Fat Years' was not published in China. Koonchung does not speculate who specifically deleted his novel, but the title of the article 'Chinese Author: My Book Was Banned in My Home Country' strongly implicates the Chinese authorities. In July an English translation by Michael S. This blurb was later The Fat Years to a more direct description 'The Notorious Thriller They The Fat Years In China' in the January ebook version of the novel by the same publisher. Another ebook version of the novel also published in the same month by the Doubleday imprint Anchor Press uses the a blurb similar to the original, describing it as 'The Book No One in The Fat Years Dares to Publish', while a print version by the same imprint replaces the blurb with a quote from the New York Times review of the novel. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jan Michalski Foundation. Retrieved September 14, Categories : novels Chinese science fiction novels science fiction novels Dystopian novels Fiction set in Novels set in China. Hidden categories: Articles containing Chinese-language text. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. The Fat Years by Chan Koonchung | Audiobook |

The book was awesome. But you'll need some background on Chinese domestic and foreign politics in order to enjoy it :. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. The Fat Years cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. The Fat Years by Chan Koonchung. Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and The Fat Years one can 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 The Fat Years has 'How can a whole nation forget about catastrophe? Except for a The Fat Years circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that has 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 rock The Fat Years world Terrifying methods of cunning, deception and terror are unveiled by the truth-seekers The Fat Years this thriller-expose of the Communist Party's stranglehold on China today. Get A Copy. More Details Original Title. Beijing China. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, The Fat Years sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Fat Yearsplease sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The Fat Years. Apr 15, Anabelle Bernard Fournier rated it really liked it Shelves: contemporary-litsci-fi. In translation theory, there are two main factions: the "naturalizers" and The Fat Years "foreignizers" The naturalizers think that literature should be translated in a language that feels natural to the reader, as if it had been written originally in their language. The foreignizers, on the other hand, think that the best way to honour a text is to keep the translation as close to the source language as the target language will allow. In other words, the first group would have the English sound English, In translation theory, there are two main factions: the "naturalizers" and the "foreignizers" The naturalizers think that literature should be translated in a language that feels natural to the The Fat Years, as if it had been written originally in their language. In other words, the first group would The Fat Years the English sound English, while the second would have English sound as Chinese as it can. The Fat Years is definitely a case of foreignization, and I think the bad reviews of this book don't really take into account that this was written in Chinese. Not only The Fat Years there the strange rhythm and sound of Chinese echoing through the English, but Western readers are The Fat Years also unaccustomed to the foreign structure of a Chinese text. I don't know much about Chinese narrative structure--all that I know is that it's different, very different, from our Western The Fat Years of a story. Despite the definite Western influences of this novel mystery narrative, science-fictionthe novel feels as foreign as, I expect, visiting Beijing would. Yes, it has a lot of exposition and not much action. Yes, the last part of the novel, the long The Fat Years by He Dongsheng, seems to go on forever and ever. But The Fat Years a pleasure in reading this--a pleasure of, somehow, listening to another tongue, another culture, and hearing it in English in your head. The Fat Years is the story of Taiwan-born writer Lo Chen who, one day, sees an old female friend, an ex-judge and now career activist Little Xi, who doesn't seem to be as happy as he is. Because everyone in Beijing is very The Fat Years. She, and another old friend, tell him that there's a month missing in China: 28 days in that disappeared from collective memory, and that only a few of them can remember. Chen's doubts are aroused, and he seems to lose the happiness that he sees all around him. There begins a quest to find the missing month, among political intrigue, elite ultranationalist student shenanigans, underground Christian churches and, eventually, love. It's the conflict between choosing to live "in a counterfeit paradise or a real hell". Which one would you choose? This is definitely a novel for the intellectual-minded. The Fat Years presents a lot of political and The Fat Years analysis--either to educate the Western reader or to wake up the Chinese one, I'm not really sure. But, according to the translator, it's not that The Fat Years, except for a few details. The Fat Years you know nothing about China, you'll be illuminated. If you know a little, or a lot, you'll probably find the point of view interesting. The Fat Years asks a lot of difficult questions that even Westerners should grapple with. How much freedom do we really have? Is the government The Fat Years working in our interest? Is democracy a political system doomed to failure because it cannot achieve anything "big"? If you like non-stop action, stay away from this book. You'll get bored. However, if you enjoy a text that plays with high political stakes and isn't afraid to call a dog a dog, I strongly suggest you grab a copy. Jan 29, Ryandake rated it it was ok. Who scarf to knit, i had plenty to keep me distracted. View 1 comment. Aug 07, Craig rated it liked it Shelves: translatedfictionchinadystopia. When I started reading The Fat Years I was expecting a dystopian novel and was surprised that the book is actually The Fat Years critique of contemporary Chinese culture and political system. The problem I had is Chan tried to include too much. There is a mystery, love story and dystopian element along with his political commentary all in three hundred pages. Instead of doing one or two of these things really well he squished in all 4 and they are just ok. I imagine unless you are familiar with the history of the CCP and its various cover-ups and scandals the book will be boring or confusing. People in China are all benefiting from new economic prosperity, everyone in China is happy and an The Fat Years month disappeared from collective memory. Why is every person, with a handful of outliers, in the entire The Fat Years happy? What happened during that month and why does no one remember it? These questions set the stage for the mystery in the book. Old Chan, a Taiwanese author, is the protagonist and the character that connects everyone. He figures his friend is mistaken and there is no way an entire month could disappear. Next he runs into an ex-girlfriend, Little XI, at a bookstore. Little Xi is a former judge who lost her position for failing to follow the The Fat Years line and execute enough suspects. She is one of the few sad people in China and when Chan sees her it reignites his love and convinces him to try win her affection. Finally there is Zhang Dou a former child slave and migrant worker who now lives outside Beijing. Like Fao Caodi he remembers the missing month and together they team up to figure out what happened. Much of the book consists of Old Chan trying to locate Little Xi. She has gone off the grid and spends most of her time hiding and making anonymous posts on the Internet condemning the Community Party. As Chen tries to track her down Fang and Zhang team up and try to piece together information about what happened during the 28 missing days. Xi, Fang, and Zhang eventually team up and view spoiler [ kidnap a The Fat Years politician and force him to answer their questions. This section feels more like a laundry list of the atrocities committed by the CCP such as the Cultural Revolution, The Gang of Four, the Tiananmen massacre, Falun Gong massacre and cover-ups by corrupt officials than a novel. This The Fat Years everyone a slight high feeling and makes everyone feel relaxed and happy all the time. He likens this to western countries putting fluoride in the water and says since everyone is happy why should it stop? Finally Chan and The Fat Years let He go knowing they have enough information to cause mass unrest and The Fat Years his career and He knows he could have them killed if any word leaks out. Chan and Little Xi agree to go off and spend their lives together. I can understand how this book could be really thought provoking if you live in China and were unaware that the government did these things but I think a lot of western readers will be less surprised. The Fat Years was clearly written for a Chinese audience and might have problems gaining traction in the west.