New release of Lao She books revisits a dark history: WSJ

“Cat Country,” considered by some to be the first Chinese science-fiction novel, is out later this month in a new edition as part of Penguin China’s Modern Classics series.

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.