Wang Shuo is probably the most popular living fiction writer in China today. Yet this book is the first of his to have been translated into English, although French editions of his work have been around for several years.
The problem may be that Wang is the king of the vernacular, famous for telling life as it really is. In his China, people are more interested in living than in talking about politics.
His language is coarse, the situations are sordid, and his characters are reprobates who pass their days avoiding anything like real work, staggering from one boozy poker game to the next, falling in and out of bed with one another, and chain-smoking imported cigarettes.
For foreigners whose impressions of China are based on books like Wild Swans and Life and Death in Shanghai, Wang's alternative picture will come as a shock. His characters' odd brushes with authority stem from swindling and stealing rather than the spreading of anti-communist propaganda.
Politics is never mentioned, except as a joke, something so dull no one really thinks much about it.
Playing for Thrills is a black account of the nihilism that has overtaken the lives of many of China's post-revolutionary generation, who may seem to care about nothing, not even one another.