But the problem isn’t just a matter of idiom. “Brothers” simply doesn’t fit into any narrative category familiar to the Western reader. It begins as a sentimental family-epic-cum-romantic-comedy: Baldy Li and his stepbrother, the sober and dutiful Song Gang, are orphaned during the Cultural Revolution. They then fall in love with the same woman, the beautiful Lin Hong, whom Song Gang finally wins over and marries after a byzantine “Cyrano de Bergerac”-style struggle. But in the beginning of the second volume, the novel morphs into broad historical satire. Bereft and humiliated, Baldy Li turns his attention to making money, builds an empire as China’s foremost trash collector and scrap dealer, and uses his fortune to create an all-virgin beauty competition in order to prey on its contestants, yet ultimately finds that his rapacious sexual appetite is only making him miserable.

attached to: Brothers