Seven stories, seven whispers into the ears of life: A Yi's unexpected twists of crime burst from the everyday, with glimpses of romance distorted by the weaknesses of human motive. A Yi employs his forensic skills to offer a series of portraits of modern life, both uniquely Chinese, and universal in their themes. His years as a police officer serve him well as he teases the truth from simple observation, now brought into the English language in a masterful translation by Alex Woodend. The stories include Two Lives, Attic, Spring, Bach, Predator. The first in the new Flame Tree Press series, Stories from China. FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launching in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

A thrilling journey through China's dark criminal underworld, from a celebrated voice in Chinese literature When Hongyang is found dead after a night of debauched drinking, it looks as if his reign of terror has finally come to an end. Few in this insular community have much reason to mourn his passing: Hongyang is an infamous mob boss, a man with plenty of enemies. But now it seems that his years of crime have also earned him some very dangerous friends. As his funeral draws near, those who knew him come together to look back on a life characterised by corruption, deceit and a flair for violence. Their recollections will keep Hongyang's legacy alive, with terrifying consequences. From the master of Chinese noir fiction comes this explosive new novel about the power of one man, unravelled by a tangled web of secrets.

On a normal day in provincial China, a bored high-school student goes about his regular business. But he’s planning the brutal murder of his only friend, a talented violinist. He invites her round, strangles her, stuffs her body into a washing machine and flees town. On the run, he is initially anxious, but soon he alerts the police to his whereabouts, surrenders to undercover agents in a pool bar, and sabotages all efforts by China’s judiciary system, a steady stream of psychologists and his family to overturn the death penalty, all without ever showing a shred of remorse. A Perfect Crime is both a vision of China’s heart of darkness — the despair that traps the rural poor and the incoherent rage lurking behind their phlegmatic front — and a technically brilliant excursion into the claustrophobic realm of classic horror and suspense. With exceptional tonal control, A Yi steadily reveals the psychological backstory that enables us to make sense of the story’s dramatic violence and provides chillingly apt insights into the psychology behind a murder committed simply as an intellectual challenge to relieve the daily tedium of existence.