“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.

attached to: Lao She