A NEW novel by a Chinese poet who killed his wife with an axe and then committed suicide on a remote New Zealand island has become an instant bestseller in Beijing.
The novel Ying'er, said to contain clues to the author Gu Cheng's gruesome behaviour, only made it to the bookstands a couple of weeks ago but many booksellers in the capital have already sold out.
''I [have] never seen a novel sell out this quick, its amazing,'' the owner of a small bookstore in Beijing said yesterday.
Gu's murder of his wife and subsequent death on October 8 quickly made the front pages of Beijing's tabloid newspapers and precipitated a mad scramble among the mainland's publishing houses to secure the publishing rights for Ying'er.
The manuscript had been auctioned off in Shenzhen two days before Gu's suicide for 23,000 yuan (about HK$30,820) but after news of his death made the headlines buyers rushed to try to obtain the book.
The manuscript was eventually bought by an anonymous bidder for 500,000 yuan, who then donated it to the Writers' Publishing House.