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An Excess Male: A Novel Audiobook
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From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classics The Handmaid's Tale and When She Woke.
Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son. Now 40 million of them can't find wives.
China’s One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own. An Excess Male is one such leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.
Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum allowed by law. Only a single family—one harboring an illegal spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls, streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.
In Maggie Shen King’s startling and beautiful debut, An Excess Male looks to explore the intersection of marriage, family, gender, and state in an all-too-plausible future.
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“Maggie Shen King has a great gift not only for creating a complicated, futuristic world but also for creating characters who win our hearts and minds. An Excess Male is a wonderfully inventive and wonderfully funny novel.”
— Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author
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“King brings us a uniquely interesting, dystopian read…With her sharp, distinctive storytelling and vivid characters, readers will be drawn into the complex plot.”
— RT Book Reviews (4 stars) -
“Thoughtful, heartbreaking…King expertly explores the myriad routes to family, hope, and love in a repressive country.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“A believable near-future vision of what could happen with China’s growing gender imbalance.”
— Library Journal -
“King imagines a frightening reality, in which forced cultural norms run counter to basic human rights, leaving readers exceedingly uncomfortable with its feasibility.”
— Booklist -
“Provocative…An intelligent, incisive commentary on how love survives—or doesn’t—under the heel of the State.”
— Kirkus Reviews
An Excess Male Listener Reviews
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Renata Mullen, 1/26/2018
About Maggie Shen King
Maggie Shen King grew up in Taiwan and attended both Chinese and American schools before moving to Seattle at age sixteen. She studied English literature at Harvard, and her short stories have appeared in Ecotone, ZYZZYVA, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Her manuscript Fortune’s Fools won Second Prize in Amazon’s 2012 Breakthrough Novel Award. She lives near San Francisco.
About James Chen
James Chen is an actor and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. He has a recurring role on the Law & Order SVU and has appeared in such films as We Need to Talk about Kevin and Mr. Popper’s Penguins. He received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his MFA from Yale Drama. He is also a member of Descendant Films.