Serve the People!

This sexually charged political satire by one of China's most distinguished authors was instantly banned in its native China, with propaganda ministers enraged by its depiction of the People's Liberation Army during the Cultural Revolution.

Set in 1967, model student in his regiment Wu Dawang can recite tracts of Mao's writings and prepare ten courses of food in record time. He wants nothing more than to earn promotion and serve the people, working as hard as he can in the commander's home. But the latter's bored wife, Liu Lian, has other ideas of how Wu Dawang can serve the people—in her bedroom.

Forgetting the battles of the People's Liberation Army, mistress and servant engage in an extended erotic adventure. The more they defile the symbols of Mao's cultural revolution, the better their sex. Together they smash statues of Mao, tear up The Little Red Book and urinate on his epigrams.

The passions of a peasant soldier and his mistress subvert sexual, political and revolutionary taboos. Serve the People! is at once a deliciously comic satire, and a masterpiece of profound pathos by one of China's greatest living writers.

'Deconstructs Maoism with the Orwellian gusto of Animal Farm...Highly readable and historically astute.' Sunday Canberra Times