Science fiction is hardly a popular genre in China, so how bizarre it is to see the literary sensation of the year be a dystopian futurist novel. Wrapped in the angst of a detective noir and written with shades of Orwell's 1984, The Age of Prosperity chronicles the imagined future world of 2013: an age in which a proud and prosperous China has risen to glory after the economic collapse of the Western world.

Although The Age of Prosperity is not legally available on the mainland, and the book is likely unpublishable here given its willingness to speak openly about politics, unofficial pirate editions of the novel are already in wide circulation. Everyone is talking about this book, and everyone we know who has read the book attests to it being a compelling and fairly quick read. But since the themes of the book play differently to a Chinese audience than an international one, in our advanced Chinese lesson for today we wanted to sit Echo and Brendan down for an in-depth discussion of whether this book lives up to its reputation.

And now a word of warning. Our advanced lessons here on Popup Chinese are hard, and this podcast is no exception. This show features native-level Chinese and presumes you can follow along at speed. We aren't going to show you any mercy and slow things down, but to help put the discussion in context, we have added some of the key vocabulary used in this podcast to our vocabulary list for this lesson. If you're having trouble following along, you may wish to check that to see what you're missing. So enjoy the discussion. And if you've read the book please feel free to share your thoughts in the discussion section below too. We would love to hear from you.