An imaginary country of cats where no one yields the right of way, where foreigners are both feared and treated with an undeserved amount of respect, and where the food is toxic – this could be a modern fable, but it is a novel published in 1932 by Lao She, one of China’s most famed 20th-century writers.
“Cat Country,” considered by some to be the first Chinese science-fiction novel, is out next month in a new edition as part of Penguin China’s Modern Classics series. A second Lao She book, “Mr. Ma and Son,” first published in 1929, is also being made available in English this month for the first time in many years. Both are part of Penguin’s bet that there is a growing market for English translations of Chinese literature.
“Cat Country” is a dystopian story that reads like a hybrid of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984,” a thinly veiled condemnation of Chinese society that predicts a world of corruption, violence and xenophobia.
Correction: “Cat Country” will be published in September and “Mr. Ma and Son” will be published this month. An earlier version of this article had the dates switched.