«A master of inimitable humour. Always hilarious, thought-provoking, and immensely moving»

Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans

«A biting and humane novel of stunning concision... Bleakly funny, incisive, stinging and – in its most destabilising passages – gut-wrenching»

Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Guardian

«Crackles with bruising satire …China Dream may be the purest distillation yet of Mr. Ma’s talent for probing the country’s darkest corners»

Mike Ives, New York Times

«A savage satire of Chinese authoritarianism and censorship... Believable and brutal, this is Ma Jian’s boldest…most elegiac work’ »

Catherine Taylor, Financial Times

«Mr Ma's critique of the totalitarian mindset recalls that of Soviet-era dissidents...tragic and elegiac...garnished with both horror and tenderness... A hand-grenade of a book»

The Economist

«This must be one of the liveliest novels about brainwashing ever written… For all the horror, Ma sees freedom in confronting the true nightmare of the past, perceiving that it is the only way to liberate our futures»

Alex Peake-Tomkinson, Spectator

«Creepily Orwellian... makes Mao’s Cultural Revolution look like minor tinkering»

Max Davidson, Mail on Sunday