Fate Rewritten

"If you can’t afford luck, all you can get is compensation. Wang Changchi shouldn’t be here. For generations, his family has dreamed of escaping their poverty-stricken village, placing their hopes on him to finally make it out – but when a twist of fate takes his chance away, his only shot at a better life in the city is as a migrant worker risking his life in the high-rise construction boom. Confronting China’s system of household registration that privileges the lucky few, Fate Rewritten is a spirited depiction of the struggle to change the course of destiny. All it would take is a few words on the right documents – but the cost of rewriting fate could require giving up everything… Moving for work is always a roll of the dice, but in China, where the hukou system seriously limits opportunity, it’s more than just a coin-toss decision. An almost satirical account of the limitations of a system starting in 1958, Fate Rewritten is an ode to the internal migrants responsible for keeping the urban industry ticking over. Bureaucracy is an absolute, undeniable, inefficient dealer of destiny. Caught in a struggle to escape poverty, the protagonist is driven to underhanded strategies, and even then seems to find the cards are stacked against him. There is no ideological resolution, no moral reckoning, no forgiveness of the state, only a bleak display of a game where the house edge is displayed front and centre in all its disparity. Five different books on Chinese society with a variety of perspectives, we hope this list opens up your imagination to the true range of contemporary Chinese literature."