吃瓜时代的儿女们
Strange Bedfellows
Introduction:

Strange Bedfellows is a farcical tale of sibling devotion, sexual exploitation, and rampant corruption among government officials, all played out more or less in bed.

The strange bedfellows include:
A country girl: she borrows money from a hometown loan shark to find another wife for her brother, whose first wife ran off with another man. When this second wife runs away with the money, the girl goes on a hunt for her to retrieve it, only to end up falling prey herself to a high-class madam who teaches her to be a fake virgin prostitute.

A governor of a certain province: he faces arrest and possible execution for taking bribes, until a fortuneteller presents him with a mysterious solution—sleep with a virgin. It works and he gets to keep his job.

A chief of a certain city’s environmental protection bureau: a bridge constructed under his watch collapses, killing over two dozen people. After netizens’ online investigations reveal he has often been photographed wearing an array of expensive watches, he is arrested and confesses to having slept with a virgin prostitute.

When the authorities eventually locate the country-girl-turned-(fake)-virgin prostitute, she ends up being the key to exposing a number of corrupt officials, which earns her praises all over the internet.

Written in the tradition of Swiftian satire, Strange Bedfellows makes social commentary through exaggerated events and caricatures. It experiments with narrative structure and, unlike conventional satirical works with clear-cut objectives, leaves the readers pondering the intended moral lesson.

Published in other languages:
Chinese (Mainland)

Publisher:Changjiang Literature & Art Publishing House Co., Ltd.


Traditional Chinese (HongKong)

Publisher:Cosmos Books Limited


Traditional Chinese (Taiwan)

Publisher:Chiu Ko Publishing Co.,Ltd


English

Publisher:Columbia Press
Translator:Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin


French

Publisher:Gallimard
Translator:Geneviève Imbot-Bichet


Italian

Publisher:L’Erma
Translator:Patrizia Liberati


Spanish

Publisher:Siglo XXI
Translator:Liljana


Swedish

Publisher:Bokförlaget Wanzhi
Translator:Anna Gustafsson Chen


Czech

Publisher:Odeon
Translator:Zuzana Li


Russian

Publisher:Hyperion Publishing House
Translator:Rodionova Oksana Petrovna


Hungarian

Publisher:Geopen
Translator:Zombory Klara


Arabic

Publisher:Sefsafa Publishing House
Translator:HASSANEIN FAHMY HUSSEIN SAYED


Japanese

Publisher:Sairyusha Publishing Company Limited
Translator:Mizuno Eiko


Korean

Publisher:Munhakdongne Publishing Group
Translator:Kim Tae Sung



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