Han Han's Party officially on sale
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The long-awaited publication from popular writer Han Han hits the shelves Tuesday, in book form. Sales of the work skyrocketed over the weekend, dominating Amazon.cn's No. 1 position since its prerelease Thursday.
Entitled Party, the publication has attracted attention since the 27-year-old celebrated writer announced on his blog last year that he planned to launch a magazine, inviting contributions of essays, poetry and opinion pieces.
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Entitled Party, the long-awaited publication from popular writer Han Han hits the shelves Tuesday. [China.org.cn] |
Party was scheduled for release last year, but failed to attain a magazine issue number. Today the work will be sold as a book, each issue needing a new number before publication.
Han said he has been struggling to attain registration because Party's content has not been able to survive censorship.
"I planned to provide readers a good art publication with more free and wild writing, but it seems the idea is too good to be true," Han wrote in his blog earlier this year. "The delay of the flight is not due to the plane itself, but the rough weather."
Targeting young people, the first copy will include 34 articles from different writers, beginning with Zhou Yunpeng's Green Train and ending with Han Han's I Want to Have a Talk with the World, according to Amazon.cn.
"Although the writers have provided very well-written articles, ultimately it's still only an arts publication," Han wrote in his blog in June, in a bid to lower readers' expectation, according to Han. "It can't shoulder the responsibility of satisfying people's longing for changes to be made to improve social status or social reforms."
Online presales for Party opened Thursday and within 10 hours it was in Amazon.cn's No.1 spot, where it remained as of Monday.
The first run of 50,000 copies will also be available today in bookstores. Each copy has a regional code to ensure authenticity. The 128-page Party is scheduled to be a bi-monthly publication and will cost 16 yuan ($2.40).
A leading writer in China, Han, born in Shanghai in 1982, dropped out of middle school and turned to writing. He published his first novel The Triple Door in 2000, in which he strongly criticized China's educational system. The book became a bestseller and Han has since published more than 10 novels, many of which were successful.
Han is also a professional rally driver, a singer and has been cited several times as the most popular blogger in China and the world.
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