Ian Johnson
In his novel Cat Country, Lao She produced one of the most remarkable, perplexing, and prophetic works of modern China. On one level it is a work of science fiction—a visit to a country of cat-like people on Mars—that lampoons 1930s China. On a deeper level, the work predicts the terror and violence of the early Communist era and the chaos and brutality that led to Lao She’s own death during the Cultural Revolution. Cat Country is often called a dystopian novel, but when Lao She took his own life, it was an uncannily accurate portrait of the reality around him. Many points still ring true today.
SOURCE: The New York Review of Books – Read entire story here.
