China Book Club: 'China Dream' by Ma Jian

This novel, by the exiled Ma Jian, is a darkly comic tale of aspiration and state-enforced amnesia.

After decades of loyal service, Ma Daode, a corrupt and lecherous party official, has been appointed director of the China Dream Bureau, charged with promoting President Xi Jinping’s China Dream of national rejuvenation. But just as he is about to present his plan for a microchip that will be implanted into the brain of every citizen to replace all painful recollections with a collective dream of national supremacy, his sanity begins to unravel. Plagued by flashbacks of the Cultural Revolution, his nightmare visions from the past threaten to destroy his dream of a glorious future.