The Noodle Maker

Every week, a writer of political propaganda and a professional blood donor meet for dinner. Inside his head lives an unwritten book about the people he knows or sees everyday on the streets - people who lives are far more representative of the world in which he lives...

Compelling, inventive and bleakly funny

Deep black humour...owes a debt to Italo Calvino

Ma's writing shines a light that is both humane and angry into some of the dustiest corners of a closed and often forgotten society

Playful and wonderfully dark...a Chinese Kundera

Ma Jian was born in Qingdao, China. He is the author of seven novels, a travel memoir, three story collections and two essay collections. He has been translated into twenty-six languages. Since the publication of his first book in 1987, all his work has been banned in China. He now lives in exile in London