Format: Paperback, 333 pages. Category: Fiction. ISBN 978-988-18419-2-7
LEAVE ME ALONE
Thirty six year old Murong – Chinese literary megastar and now reclusive ‘celebrity’ was twenty eight and working as a sales manager in the car industry when he started posting his first novel Chengdu Please Forget Me Tonight on the internet. In 2002 it became a cult hit amongst young middle class Chinese looking for writing that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable literature. Chengdu was eventually posted on almost all of China’s online bulletin boards, and attracted around 5 million online readers. Thousands of web commentaries and impassioned debates about the book appeared, while ‘formal’ commentaries and critiques amounted to more than 50,000 words. The novel won Murong the New Periodical ‘Person of the Year’, Xinliang website’s ‘Most popular novel’, and the China Literary Journal’s 2003 literature prize.
After becoming one of China’s first web success stories the book was picked up by the Inner Mongolia People’s Publishing House. Two new editions were later published by 21st Century Publishing House and Epoch Publishing House. Over the 3 editions, Chengdu is estimated to have sold over 500,000 copies.
In 2003, Chengdu was brought to the stage in Shanghai, in a play which broke box office records. TV and film versions have also been screened in China.
In 2007, Chengdu was published in France. Publisher (Editons de l’Oliver). In 2008 the novel was published in Germany (Zweitundeins), and in 2009 the first English translation was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin, and was long-listed for the Man Asia Literary Prize.
Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu is an unflinching, darkly funny take on love and life in modern China. It’s the story of three young men, Chen Zhong, Li Liang and Big Head Wang and their tragi-comic struggles to make their way in Chengdu, China’s fifth most populous city. Despite their aspirations in the newly capitalist China, the trio’s lives are beset by dead-end jobs, gambling debts, drinking, drugs, and whoring. Chen Zhong is married to Zhao Yue. Although he loves her, he plays around with other women. But it isn’t until Chen Zhong discovers that Zhao Yue is having an affair that he realizes exactly how much he stands to lose…
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