Chen Qiufan is quietly tucked away at a corner table in a lively Beijing bookstore — so quietly, in fact, that I miss him entirely for half an hour.
Embarrassed, and knowing him to be a rapacious consumer of entertainment and literature (he pushes himself to see at least 100 new films and read 50 books a year), I ask him which works have been on his mind of late.
“I’m reading the Bible right now,” he says, with a sly smile. Though an atheist, Chen, who also goes by the name of Stanley Chen, confesses the biblical stories have an alluring science fiction quality about them: “Take the story of Gomorrah. It’s a lot like the tales of Armageddon sci-fi writers like, no?”