An NYRB Classics Original The hero of The Invisibility Cloak lives in contemporary Beijing—where everyone is doing their best to hustle up the ladder of success while shouldering an ever-growing burden of consumer goods—and he’s a loser. Well into his forties, he’s divorced (and still doting on his ex), childless, and living with his sister (her husband wants him out) in an apartment at the edge of town with a crack in the wall the wind from the north blows through while he gets by, just, by making customized old-fashioned amplifiers for the occasional rich audio-obsessive. He has contempt for his clients and contempt for himself. The only things he really likes are Beethoven and vintage speakers. Then an old friend tips him off about a special job—a little risky but just don’t ask too many questions—and can it really be that this hopeless loser wins? This provocative and seriously funny exercise in the social fantastic by the brilliantly original Ge Fei, one of China’s finest living writers, is among the most original works of fiction to come out of China in recent years. It is sure to appeal to readers of Haruki Murakami and other fabulists of contemporary irreality.
Author
Ge Fei (Chinese: 格非; pinyin: Gé Fēi; Wade–Giles: Ke Fei, born 1964), pen-name for Liu Yong (刘勇), is a notable contemporary Chinese author whose works were prominent during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ge Fei was considered one of the preeminent experimental writers during that period, and he is currently a professor of literature at Tsinghua University. His most prominent work is the novel 人面桃花, Renmian Taohua (Peach Blossom Beauty) (2004), which explores the concept of utopia, and is written with many classical allusions. It is the first book of the Jiangnan Trilogy. The second book, 山河入梦 [Shānhé rùmèng] (My Dream of the Mountain and River), was published in 2007 and the third one, 春尽江南 [Chūn jǐn jiāngnán] (Spring Ends in Jiangnan), in 2011. The title of Renmian Taohua is taken from a classical work, and has also been used by the director Du Haibin for his documentary on a gay club in Chengdu (2005); the English name for the film is Beautiful Men but this is not a direct translation. (from Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge\_Fei\_...
