I am your father Author: Wang Shuo Publisher: Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House

This is a novel describing the affection between father and son, but Wang Shuo did not fall into the cliché of moving or even sensationalizing people with emotion. Instead, he described the unique father-son affection in his writing from his own unique perspective.

Ma Linsheng, who divorced his wife in middle age, is a kind of intellectual, at least this is how he defines himself. Under the dual pressure of age and economy, he struggles to maintain this image of himself. To do this, he must be particular, at least he must be particular about one thing: cleanliness. He is a small clerk in a bookstore, a little pretentious but living a cowardly life, full of fantasy (fantasizing about meeting a girl who came to the bookstore again) but unrealistic. In order to solve the increasingly tense relationship with his son, he decided to become friends with his son on a brotherly basis; he wanted to get close to Qi Huaiyuan, the mother of his son's classmate, whom his son introduced to him, but he was unwilling to do so (because of the girl). Wang Shuo used his usual humorous and teasing writing style to portray the image of a small intellectual living in various contradictions, which made people laugh and feel sad.

Wang Shuo is a Beijing native. Born in 1958, he joined the Navy’s North Sea Fleet as a medical worker after graduating from high school in 1976. He returned to Beijing in 1980 after retiring from the army and joined the Beijing Pharmaceutical Company’s drug wholesale store as a salesperson. He began writing in 1978. He resigned in 1983 and became a freelance writer. He joined the Chinese Writers Association in 1988. He has published many novellas and novels, totaling more than 1.6 million words, and some of his works have been adapted into movies and TV series. His representative works include “Air Hostess”, “Floating Out of the Sea”, “Half Flame and Half Sea Water”, “The Troublemakers”, “Don’t Treat Me Like a Human Being”, “What We Play Is the Heartbeat”, “I’m Your Dad”, “Looks Beautiful”, “Talking to Our Daughter” and other novels, which are widely welcomed by readers.