Inside the Red Mansion

"Delightful, funny, and very perceptive, Inside the Red Mansion is a picaresque adventure that provides a look at a part of modern China rarely glimpsed by the outside world." -- James Fallows, national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly Due to a mix-up on a routine reporting assignment, Oliver August stumbles onto the hunt for China's most wanted man, Lai Changxing, an illiterate tycoon on the run from corruption charges. Sensing something emblematic in the outsized tale of Lai's rise and fall, August sets out to find the self-made billionaire, hoping that if he can understand how Lai reinvented himself, he will also better grasp the tectonic forces transforming modern China. Lai embodies the story of China's recent success as well as its Achilles' heel: its command economy, blended with the free market, is riddled with corruption. Moving ever closer to the elusive tycoon, August introduces us to a people in the midst of head-spinning self-transformation. We meet a nightclub hostess and her gaggle of "Miss Temporaries"; powerful businessmen on a debt-settling round of nocturnal golf; and a foie gras king who markets his goose liver by the ton and prefers it deep fried. This is a China seething with desire, engaged in a slapstick fight with its past, and hell-bent on the future. After studying philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University, Oliver August joined the Times of London to become its youngest-ever New York correspondent. He spent seven years in China as the Beijing bureau chief and moved to the Middle East in 2006. Simon Vance has recorded close to 300 audiobooks and has earned seven Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, including one for his narration of Theft by Peter Carey. A four-time Audie finalist, Simon most recently won an Audie Award for Market Forces.