Ma Jian's China Dream is a brutal satire on Xi Jinping's 'China Dream' more than it's a story of a man's complete descent into madness. Fact and fiction bleed into each other seamlessly in this stunning book. The seemingly distant but actually close dystopia described in the book, peppered with life-like characters, makes China Dream a compelling read.

Ma Daode, a corrupt government official, heads the China Dream Bureau; a department that aims to somehow inculcate the China Dream (explained as The Great Rejuvenation in 2012 by president Xi Jinping himself) in every Chinese citizen's mind. While Ma Daode is extremely infuential and successful, snippets from his past keep creeping into his present, threatening everything he holds to be true.

At first the book is seemingly mundane and dry but it quickly spirals out of control to a point where it becomes impossible to tell what's real and what isn't. Ma Jian has handled the prose with such dexterity that even though there is a sharp divide between when the narrative is structured and tight and when it's utterly chaotic, it's still impossible to point out the exact moment the transition from the real to the unreal takes place. I found myself totally immersed in the novel.