Synopses & Reviews
A PERFECT CRIME may be anchored in Chinese society, but its existential crisis is universal.The Wall Street Journal
On a normal day in provincial China, a bored high school student goes about his regular business. But hes planning the brutal murder of his only friend, a talented violinist. He 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 Chinas 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 Chinas heart of darkness the despair that traps the rural poor and the rage lurking behind their phlegmatic front and a technically brilliant excursion into the claustrophobic realm of classic suspense. With exceptional tonal control, A Yi steadily reveals the psychological backstory that enables us to make sense of the storys 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.
Review
"A terrifying, technically flawless account of moral darkness within the contemporary People's Republic, by one of mainland China's most accomplished and promising young novelists."
Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China
A Yi is one of the most gifted Chinese authors in recent times.”
Nobel Prize winning poet, Bei Dao
"This impressively nasty account of a motiveless murder could well be said to mark a fiendishly clever point where Albert Camus nods benignly to Bret Easton Ellis.... It is as much about the society in which it takes place as it is about the killer or the crime.”
The Irish Times
"Yi, a former police officer, is slowly rising to prominence on the literary scene in China, where this novel was published in 2011. It seems a commentary on both the culture and on the amorality and emotional detachment of one individual in it. "
Booklist
Review
"One of the most talked about writers of fiction in China.... What lends A Yi's writing its power is the way it is informed by his work as a policeman a career that constantly exposed him to the country's grubby underworld. In this way, the book calls to mind 19th-century French Modernists like Baudelaire and Rimbaud who shared a profound disgust for their society's conventional values, or Céline, a descendant of theirs who took their biting cynicism to a whole new level. As with A Yi, they each responded to their society's newfound industrial wealth with a contemptuous: That's all?"
Howard French in The Wall Street Journal
"Tightly crafted
less a traditional catch-him-if-you-can crime caper and more a psychological probe into a pathological mind. Rather than cliff-hangers or plot twists, its the pulsating inner zeal of this nihilistic 19-year-old that gives the book its verve
. The authors background has provided him with rich pickings to portray China, both in the grim, claustrophobic poverty of rural life and later in the corrupt actions of the lawyers and police.... A PERFECT CRIME may be anchored in Chinese society, but its existential crisis is universal. "
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore in The Wall Street Journal
"A former police officer who writes from experience, A Yi excels in his vivid, sordid portrait of contemporary China. It's a heartbreaking tale of a rotten, alienated society fueled by greed - a nation in moral crisis."
South China Morning Post
"A terrifying, technically flawless account of moral darkness within the contemporary People's Republic, by one of mainland China's most accomplished and promising young novelists."
Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China
A Yi is one of the most gifted Chinese authors in recent times.”
Nobel Prize winning poet, Bei Dao
"This impressively nasty account of a motiveless murder could well be said to mark a fiendishly clever point where Albert Camus nods benignly to Bret Easton Ellis.... It is as much about the society in which it takes place as it is about the killer or the crime.”
The Irish Times
"A Yi's isolated narrator is equal parts calculating monster and forsaken victim: deserted, neglected, and ignored, he finds that his only means of feeling alive is to engender death. This austere English PEN Award winner offers an exponentially more chilling alternative to the plethora of dystopic titles; fans of Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Fuminori Nakamura, and even Keigo Higashino will surely find resonating, realistic terror here."
Library Journal
"Yi, a former police officer, is slowly rising to prominence on the literary scene in China, where this novel was published in 2011. It seems a commentary on both the culture and on the amorality and emotional detachment of one individual in it. "
Booklist
Synopsis
"Where Anthony Burgess sought to conjure a world of abstract flair and inexplicable cruelty in A Clockwork Orange, Yi strikes a far deeper chord, delving into the mind of a youth whose lethal motivations are abundantly and undeniably troubling."
--World Literature Today On a normal day in provincial China, a teenager goes about his regular business, but he's also planning the brutal murder of his only friend. He lures her over, strangles her, stuffs her body into the washing machine and flees town, whereupon a perilous game of cat-and-mouse begins.
A shocking investigation into the despair that traps the rural poor as well as a technically brilliant excursion into the claustrophobic realm of classic horror and suspense, A Perfect Crime is a thrilling and stylish novel about a motiveless murder that echoes Kafka's absurdism, Camus' nihilism and Dostoyevsky's depravity.
Synopsis
On a normal day in provincial China, a teenager goes about his regular business, but he's also planning the brutal murder of his only friend. He lures her over, strangles her, stuffs her body into the washing machine and flees town, whereupon a perilous game of cat-and-mouse begins.
A shocking investigation into the despair that traps the rural poor as well as a technically brilliant excursion into the claustrophobic realm of classic horror and suspense, A Perfect Crime is a thrilling and stylish novel about a motiveless murder that echoes Kafka's absurdism, Camus' nihilism and Dostoyevsky's depravity. 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 a country on the cusp of enormous social, political and economic change.
About the Author
A Yi is a Chinese author born in 1976. After spending five years as a police officer, he quit to become the editor in chief of the bimonthly literary magazine Chutzpah. He has written two collections of short stories, Grey Stories and The Bird Saw Me, some of which have been published in Granta and The Guardian, and he was nominated for Peoples Literature prestigious award for the Top Twenty Literary Giants of the Future in 2010. A Perfect Crime was published in China in 2011. He lives in Beijing.