BEIJING, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese espionage writer Mai Jia has said his new book, initially titled "Rensheng Haihai" (life is ocean-wide), tells of a struggling man's "friendship" with his own fate.
More than eight years after the publication of his last novel, Mai Jia's new work is ready. In the past his spy thrillers have swept major literary awards in China, and he has been referred to by some western critics as China's answer to John le Carre.
"Decoded," the first of his novels to be translated into English, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States in 2014. It reveals the mysterious world of Unit 701, a top-secret intelligence agency whose sole purpose is counterespionage and code breaking.
"Rensheng Haihai" avoids the spy genre and has instead gone "back to childhood and hometowns to decipher new codes -- the codes of human nature and the mind," according to the writer at the 2019 Tencent Neo-Culture Creativity Conference.
The new book, completed and yet to be published, tells the story of a man who "falls in love with his own miserable and hateable fate, and who, caught in a turbulent life, bears his cross and never drifts along," Mai Jia says.
