Mai Jia's first new novel in eight years, a literary coming-of-age story set in twentieth-century China.

The phenomenal #1 Chinese bestseller, with over 4 million copies sold. This is a searing exploration of what makes a hero: a literary masterpiece, available in the English language for the very first time.

The boy grows up in a small village in south China listening to stories about the Colonel: some say he was a legendary army doctor during the war, some say he was a traitor to the Party, still others say he is a wicked sex machine. The stories are bawdy and mesmerizing, always larger than life. Yet in reality, the Colonel is just a middle-aged man who loves his cat. And why on earth does everyone call him 'the Eunuch'?

From these disparate sources, the boy tries to piece together who the Colonel really is, just as he himself grows up in a rapidly changing China. It is not until many years later, when the boy also becomes a middle-aged man, that he would look back and finally solve the puzzle.

"

With its story of great changes across history, its melding of deceitful battlefields with every day life, and its plots and characters that are by turns startling and touching, The Colonel and the Eunuch leads us to an understanding
of the inevitability and frustration of existence. In the end, the hardest code to decipher turns out to be life itself.

"Uses the mythic adventures of its protagonist to connect the dots of China's 20th century history... In this latest work, Mai Jia, noted for his spy novels, leaves his comfort zone to explore the mysteries of human nature... [A] testament to the author's ambition and commitment to his artform" - Southern Metropolis Daily