Popular TV host Yan Shouyi has it all: a great job, a loyal wife, and a beautiful young lover. It all begins to unravel when he accidently leaves his cellphone at home one fateful day. Cell Phone is part comedy, part romance, and part social commentary on the changing nature of Chinese society and the impact of technology on relationships. Beginning in 1968 in the protagonist’s rural hometown, Liu’s fast-paced, contemporary tale takes us into the complicated family and social relationships of Yan Shouyi, telling a story of friendship, love and betrayal. The cellphone becomes the “grenade” in this novel that dramatically “detonates” in the life of the main character—a telling tale in a country which is the largest user of the mobile phones in the world. The book closes with an epilogue set decades earlier when communications were primitive and unreliable, but with remarkable similarities to the problems and pitfalls of the communication age illustrated in this modern-day story. The film adaptation of Cell Phone was a major blockbuster in China.

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