Mai Jia

麦家

Mai Jia, (the pen name of Jiang Benhu), was born in 1964 into a family with a "bad background": his father was a rightists, his maternal grandfather a landlord, and his paternal grandfather a Christian. Mai Jia joined the army in an attempt to improve his political status, but after a short stint writing propaganda, his talents were recognized and he eventually moved to writing fiction full time.

Mai Jia's fame rests on his trilogy of historical spy thrillers, set in Republican-era China. Unlike most stories set in this period, Mai Jia avoids patriotism or simplistic judgments in favor of thrills, tight plotting and moral ambiguity. He's aided in his pursuit of realism by the recent declassification of some military records from that time.

Of the three books, Decoded (解密，Jiemi), the first in the series, is his own favorite, and was nominated for a Maodun prize. The second, Covert Operations (暗算, Ansuan), published in 2004, was even more popular, winning the Maodun prize. The last, Rumors (风声, Fengsheng), is probably his best known work within China, as it was made into the film The Message in 2009.

Read a longer background of Mai Jia and his novels.

 
Works by Mai Jia
Jiemi (解密), published by China Youth Publishing House in October, 2002
lit. "Decoded", currently untranslated