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Les Années Fastes (2012)

by Chan Koonchung(Favorite Author)

3.19 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

publisher

Grasset

review 1: 2.75 starsA bit of a weird story - first 60% reads like your average story and then it turns into a lesson of current/past/future Chinese policies (though how much is true and how much is fictionalized I would need to do much more research before I take anything at face value).Dystopian is not something I would use to describe this book, its more of a thinly veiled polemic against the government and a contrived fictional story mashed into a single story. It was interesting, but it could have been a much stronger piece.
review 2: An 'exposé' thinly disguised as a novel. The plot is threadbare, the characters two-dimensional and the dialogue feels clunky - although maybe this is due to the quality of translation from Chinese to English. The first star is for so... moreme interesting economic commentary, although nothing that cant be read in e.g. Stratfor's articles. But as an exposé goes, this doesn't feel fresh or shocking or new. What is radical about the information or ideas about China in this book? Maybe as a non-Chinese national I don't understand how hard it may be to write like this about China whilst living there, and for that doubt only this book gets a second star. But to be honest I found the near - future sci-fi economic explanation by He pretty lite anyway. Furthermore the narrative at the end becomes confused and the characters mere tools for the author's 'fantasy economics' rant. Just not a good book, perhaps only interesting if you've never heard of China. less

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