Chan Koonchung

Chan Koonchung is a Hong Kong-born author and journalist whose novel The Fat Years (2009) became one of the most controversial and widely discussed works of contemporary Chinese fiction — officially banned in mainland China, and read there in pirated editions and whispered conversation. Set in a near-future Beijing where an entire month has been erased from collective memory, it is a precise, chilling anatomy of how authoritarian contentment is manufactured and maintained.

Chan's work draws on his long experience navigating the cultural and political complexities of Hong Kong, Beijing, and Taiwan. He is a rare figure who has moved with some freedom between these different Chinese worlds, and his fiction reflects that unusual vantage point. The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver followed, again exploring the textures of contemporary Chinese life with a dystopian clarity that remains all too topical.