Another book randomly found on my Kindle, which I knew absolutely nothing about until I started reading it. It was written in the 1990s, set in the near future, and may turn out to be far more prescient than the author could have imagined (the USA has gone through an economic depression and then revolution and is fairly irrelvant on the world stage, while China is the dominant power). It’s ostensibly another “mosaic novel” like The Ten Percent Thief, but there is really one main character - the titular Zhang - whose chronological story is interspersed between vignettes from the perspective of other characeters in Zhang’s orbit. The world-building is intricate and believable, and the characters are engaging. I wasn’t sure how much I would enjoy the novel when I started it, by the end I was hooked and surprisingly invested in how life would play out for Zhang and the others. There isn’t really a plot as such, but there’s enough character development to keep things interesting. I’m glad I read it.

Further reading…