Leave Me Alone - A Novel of Chengdu

Three years after graduation, Chen Zhong works in a dead-end job as a sales manager for a motor oil company. He remains friends with two former classmates from his university days: Li Liang, who has quit his job and become rich gambling the stock market, and Big Head Wang, who is the head of the local police station. All have put aside the lofty dreams of their youth in their scramble to strike it rich in the newly capitalist China. Despite their aspirations, the trio's lives are mired in drinking, drugs and whoring, and beset by boredom, disillusion and gambling debts. Chen Zhong is married to Zhao Yue, whom he met when he saved her from being raped. Although he loves her, he treats her badly and plays around with other women. His bravado can't save him from his mounting problems: a large debt to his company, a pregnant mistress and a best mate who is sliding into drug addiction. But it isn't until Chen Zhong suspects Zhao Yue of having an affair that he realises exactly how much he stands to lose. And by then it is too late to stop what he has set in motion. Leave Me Alone is a sensation in China, an unflinching, surprising, darkly funny look at the pressures of life in a modern Chinese city, where riches and sex abound, but not for all...