Mai Jia

Author of «Decoded»

The works of Mai Jia belong to high-end contemporary Chinese fiction. The author comes from a peasant family that suffered from humiliation and persecution during the Cultural Revolution. Despite his background, thanks to his outstanding academic achievements, Mai Jia enrolled in military college. Upon graduation, he worked at the intelligence agencies. As a child, Mai Jia was treated with contempt and lacked communication with his peers. Later, this experience pushed him to write, and it all started with a diary.

«Decoded» was first published in 2002. Mai Jia spent eleven years working on it, and his manuscript was rejected a whopping 17 times. But right after its publication, the book topped the ranking of Chinese novels and collected a range of literary awards, one by one. Mai Jia gained worldwide recognition in 2014 after «Decoded» was published in English translation. So far, it has been translated into 33 languages.