The Message

‘Jia's playful mix of tradecraft, puzzle-solving and human folly brings an original twist to the spy fiction canon' — Sunday Times

Five code-breakers gather in the mountains of China. Which one is a double agent? A World War Two spy thriller from the most translated Chinese novelist of our time.

China, 1941. At the height of the Second World War, Japan rules over China. In Hangzhou, a puppet government propped up by the Japanese wages an underground war against the Communist resistance. Late one night, five intelligence officers, employed as codebreakers by the regime, are escorted to an isolated mansion outside the city. The secret police are certain that one of them is a communist spy. None of them is leaving until the traitor is unmasked.

It should be a straightforward case of sifting truth from lies. But as each codebreaker spins a story that proves their innocence, what really happened is called into question again and again.

'A spy novel on a grand scale in which nothing is as it seems' — The Times