A fascinating collection of vignettes based on the author’s life in China during the Cultural Revolution.

Revisiting his experiences as a boy in Beijing and then as a teenager exiled to the countryside, Zou captures a side of the Cultural Revolution that is seldom talked about - the sheer tedium and waste of young life under the regime, as well as the gallows humour that accompanies such desperate situations. 

Ninth Building was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023, announced on March 14 2023.

Longlisted
The International Booker Prize 2023
Published by
Honford Star
Publication date
Zou Jingzhi

Zou Jingzhi

About the Author

Zou Jingzhi is highly regarded in China as a fiction writer, poet, essayist, screenwriter and playwright.
More about Zou Jingzhi
Jeremy Tiang

Jeremy Tiang

About the Translator

Jeremy Tiang is a novelist, playwright, literary translator and former International Booker Prize judge.
More about Jeremy Tiang

A kaleidoscopic and understated collection of interlocking tales of life in an apartment building under the Cultural Revolution – the daily tedium of its inhabitants, lit by brief and tenuous moments of shared humanity.

— The International Booker Prize 2023 panel of judges on 'Ninth Building'