The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon

Winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize

The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon by the acclaimed prize-winning novelist Liu Zhenyun, is a gripping portrayal of contemporary China through the lens of one man’s unexpected discovery. The protagonist, Liu Yuejin is a work site cook and small-time thief whose accidental find of a flash disk chronicling a web of high-level corruption sets off a convoluted chase. Set against the economic extremes of modern China, the novel navigates the murky waters of deceit and power, showcasing the stark divide between the super-rich and the migrant workers who fuel their success.

There are no heroes in this scathing, complex, and highly readable critique of the dark side of China’s cutthroat capitalism, corruption, and the plight of the underclasses. The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon, adapted for a movie and television series in 2008 in China, is a story that resonates across mediums and cultures.

Liu Zhenyun is a Chinese novelist, screenwriter, and 2011 Mao Dun Literature Prize-winner. His novels include Someone to Talk To, Remembering 1942, I Did Not Kill My Husband, The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon, among others.

Howard Goldblatt is a literary translator of numerous works of contemporary Chinese fiction from mainland China and Taiwan, including Nobel Prize-winner Mo Yan, five of whose works are published by Arcade (The Garlic Ballads; The Republic of Wine; Big Breasts and Wide Hips; Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out; Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh). He has also translated works by Liu Zhenyun (I Did Not Kill My Husband; The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon; Remembering 1942, which are published by Arcade), Huang Chunming (The Taste of Apples), and Chen Ruoxi (The Execution of Mayor Yin). He taught modern Chinese literature and culture for more than a quarter of a century. He lives in Lafayette, Colorado.

Sylvia Li-chun Lin is a Taiwanese-born Chinese-English translator and a former professor of Chinese Literature at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Notre Dame. She won the Lian Shih-chiu Literary Translation Prize and has translated the works of Liu Zhenyun, Bi Feiyu, Mo Yan, You Jin, among others.