Wuhan, 1937. China is at war, invaded by the Japanese Army, who sweep through the country killing indiscriminately. As the capital city falls, Wuhan takes its place and will become pivotal in China's future. 1937. China is at war. Japanese soldiers sweep through the country, killing and displacing the millions who stand in their way. Nanjing has fallen, and Wuhan promoted in its place. While the rest of the world looks the other way, Wuhan stands alone against a whirlwind of violence which forced unprecedented cultural and political change. This will be a moment that shapes China's future. Weaving together a multitude of narratives, Wuhan is a historical fiction epic that pulls no punches: the heart-in-mouth story of a peasant family forced onto a thousand-mile refugee death-march; the story of Lao She - the influential Chinese novelist - who leaves his family in a war-zone to assist with the propaganda effort in Wuhan; the hellish battlefields of the Sino-Japanese war; the incipient global conflict seen through a host of colourful characters - from Chiang Kai-Shek, China's nationalist leader, to Peter Fleming, British journalist based in Wuhan and a prototype for his younger brother Ian Fleming's James Bond.

A satirical fable, a political allegory and an ecological warning from the author of The Three-Body Problem. In a sunlit clearing in central Gondwana, on an otherwise ordinary day in the late Cretaceous, the seeds of Earth's first and greatest civilization were sown in the grisly aftermath of a Tyrannosaurus' lunch. Throughout the universe, intelligence is a rare and fragile commodity - a fleeting glimmer in the long night of cosmic history. That Earth should harbour not just one but two intelligent species at the same time, defies the odds. That these species, so unalike - and yet so complementary - should forge an alliance that kindled a civilization defies logic. But time is endless and everything comes to pass eventually... The alliance between ants and dinosaurs, was of course, based on dentistry. Yet from such humble beginnings came writing, mathematics, computers, fusion, antimatter and even space travel - a veritable Age of Wonder! But such magnificent industry comes at a price - a price paid first by Earth's biosphere, and then by all those dependent on it. And yet the Dinosaurs refused to heed the Ants' warning of impending ecological collapse, leaving the Ant Federation facing a single dilemma: destroy the dinosaurs, destroy a civilization... or perish alongside them?

A multi-stranded historical epic set in China in 1937, when Wuhan stood alone against a whirlwind of war and violence. 'Fletcher impresses in this searing debut... Fletcher makes all his characters realistic, even if they only appear briefly, and excels at portraying the horrors of war and the moral challenges it poses. Fans of J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun will be riveted' Publishers Weekly, Starred Review 1937. CHINA IS AT WAR. Soldiers of the Empire of Japan sweep through the country, killing and displacing the millions who stand in their way. As vast swathes of the country fall to the invaders, Wuhan, an industrial city in the centre of China, is appointed wartime capital. While the rest of the world looks the other way, the citizens of Wuhan stand alone against a whirlwind of violence - transforming militarily, educationally, medically and culturally. Their heroic efforts halted the Japanese. Weaving together a multitude of narratives, Wuhan is a historical fiction epic that pulls no punches: the heart-in-mouth tale of a peasant family forced onto a thousand-mile refugee death-march; the story of Lao She - China's greatest writer - leaving his family in a war zone to assist with the propaganda effort in Wuhan; the hellish battlefields of the Sino-Japanese war; the approaching global conflict seen through a host of colourful characters - from Chiang Kai-Shek, China's nationalist leader, to Peter Fleming, a British journalist based in Wuhan and the prototype for his younger brother Ian Fleming's James Bond.

A Financial Times Book of the Year From the author of The Three-Body Problem, a collection of award-winning short stories - a breath-taking selection of diamond-hard science fiction. In Hold Up the Sky, Cixin Liu takes us across time and space, from a rural mountain community where elementary students must use physics to prevent an alien invasion; to coal mines in northern China where new technology will either save lives of unleash a fire that will burn for centuries; to a time very much like our own, when superstring computers predict our every move; to 10,000 years in the future, when humanity is finally able to begin anew; to the very collapse of the universe itself. Written between 1999 and 2017 and never before published in English, these stories came into being during decades of major change in China and will take you across time and space through the eyes of one of science fiction's most visionary writers. Experience the limitless and pure joy of Cixin Liu's writing and imagination in this stunning collection. Praise for Cixin Liu: 'Cixin's trilogy is SF in the grand style, a galaxy-spanning, ideas-rich narrative of invasion and war' GUARDIAN 'Wildly imaginative, really interesting ... The scope of it was immense' BARACK OBAMA, 44th President of the United States 'A unique blend of scientific and philosophical speculation, politics and history, conspiracy theory and cosmology' GEORGE R.R. MARTIN 'China's answer to Arthur C. Clarke' NEW YORKER