China: Banned author's new book on sale. A Beijing author has been given
permission to publish a novel six years after his previous one - about
high-level corruption - was banned. Chen Fang's latest work, The Wrath of
the Ocean, has been approved by the State Press and Publications
Administration.
Chen, 59, is also the author of The Wrath of Heaven, believed to be a
fictional account of the fall of disgraced Beijing Communist Party
secretary Chen Xitong. Although the book was banned in 1997, earlier press
reports claimed that pirated editions had sold more than four million
copies on the mainland.
Chen's latest work has been available in bookstores across the mainland
since 21 January. It is about a smuggler who became a gangster in Japan.
Chen researched the novel during his stay in Tokyo as a visiting scholar
from 2000 to 2001.
South China Morning Post report.
1997 reports on the banning of Wrath of Heaven.
http://www.indexonline.org/indexindex/20030121_china.shtml
