Biography

Born in Nanjing in 1958, Wang Shuo grew up in Beijing, during which time his parents were sent to the countryside as part of the Cultural Revolution, leaving him and his brother in the big city, resulting in a period of petty crime, fighting and jail. His father made him join the navy where he spent four years going on to run through a number of odd jobs while starting to write. He has written over 20 novels and has also written television series and movies. He has achieved enormous cultural status in China and in the last few years has divided his time between Beijing and California, working on screenplays for American Zoetrope, Francis Ford Coppola's production company and seeing the first two english translations of his work published.

Hoodlum Literature

Wang Shuo is not popular with the Chinese authorities. He has been described by the authorities as a 'spiritual pollutant'. They accuse him of encouraging readers to indulge - like his characters - in drinking, gambling, swearing and promiscuity, and his collected works were banned in China in 1996. yet despite this, his works of have made him a best-selling author in China, with over 20 novels and 10 million copies in print, appealing across the spectrum from the business community to factory workers, students and the unemployed. Wang Shuo is a satirical writer yet his works clearly have a broad appeal.

Set in Beijing's underbelly, a world populated with drifters, scam artists and criminals, his works are grounded in a contemporary urban modernity, an amoral environment that is akin to American hardboiled pulp fiction. His satire is less of a direct confrontation with the Communist autocracy as a mockery of their lack of cool and an utter indifference to any political or nationalistic correctness.

His work has been described as 'pizi wenxue' - punk/hoodlum/hooligan literature - for a flavour of the impact this has had on the Chinese literary and cultural scene try the discussion of contemporary Chinese literature at the inspiringly named Transnational China Project.