"[A] biting satire about Chinese re-education camps during the Great Leap Forward ... In this tale, intellectuals and dissidents are sent to a labor camp, where they promise to perform impossible tasks in order to gain their freedom ... Overseeing all of them is "the Child," who is as vulnerable to the whims of his bureaucratic superiors as his prisoners are to him. As the prisoners careen from impossible production quotas to slow death by starvation, the Child eventually offers to sacrifice himself for their freedom, in a stark parody of both Maoist ideals and Christian scripture."--Publisher's Weekly.

"First published as Sishu by Mingpao Publishing Company, Ltd. in 2010"--Title page verso.