Playing for Thrills

Wang Shuo emerged as a literary force in China in the late 1980s, pioneering a movement known as pizi wenxue, or hooligan literature. Instead of ascribing to the Communist Party's goal of "spiritual civilization," he shunned the heroic models common in Chinese literature. Playing for Thrills is the first book published in English from the man whom Newsweek calls "China's literary bad boy" and The Washington Post acclaims as "the irreverent voice of a disillusioned generation." With shades of Chandler and Kerouac, Playing for Thrills is a dark, disembodied, yet compelling story of an antihero's search for the truth about a mysterious murder. As the narrator drifts through the seamy underside of Beijing and its environs, he meets a handful of incredibly varied characters as jaded and enigmatic as himself.

* Banned by the Chinese Government for "pander[ing] to low tastes," Wang Shuo's work is increasingly popular in China and worldwide
* In China, his more than twenty bestsellers have sold nearly ten million copies and a dozen of his books have been turned into TV soap operas and films