He shows a piece of paper in the railway station, saying he wants to see higher officials for a wrong done against him. Policemen consider him a "troublemaker" and put him on the train to his hometown.

Besides varying the tone, Liu paces Li's and Shi's stories differently: one intense and the other light and playful.

In the novel, Li takes a solemn view on life, while Shi laughs at life's absurdity. The author is skewed toward Shi's attitude in confronting the ridiculous in life, according to Zhang Wei, the book's editor.

Liu believes the tension in the structure offers visible comparison on what causes absurdity.

"But the most powerful is the invisible absurdity," he says. "The fate of the officials is changed after meeting a stranger once, and a woman's fate is connected with the country's political life."

Veteran critic Lei Da says: "Liu depicts Chinese officials well, with sharp observations."

A Peking University graduate in literature, Liu has been publishing influential works since the early 1980s.

A master of cold humor and laid-back satire, Liu shifts smoothly between colloquial narration and accented dialogues. He worries about the Chinese mindset and its deep-down logic that shapes the society.

An Boshun, an editor with Changjiang Literature and Arts Press, the book's publisher, feels the novel is even better than Liu's Mao Dun Prize-winning One Sentence Worth Thousands.

Liu says that through One, he mastered a free writing style that feels more like he's interviewing the characters who are speaking for themselves. In the new novel, he says, he pushes the boundaries even further.

"Sometimes Chinese officials are appointed from above," Liu says.

"That's why in the novel a random word from the top causes a mess in the bottom."

"That's also why a sesame seed can be turned into a watermelon, an ant into an elephant," he adds.

Contact the writer at [email protected].

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