Four sharp, bleakly comic stories about family life in modern China around debt, shame, cruelty, resentment and inheritance rot.

Yao Emei writes domestic life as a hotbox with parents and children, husbands and wives, old obligations and new ambitions, all trapped together in rooms where nobody quite escapes cleanly.

The title has teeth. “Unfilial” gestures toward one of the oldest moral structures in Chinese family life, then turns it inside out: what happens when loyalty to family becomes another form of violence? These are not sentimental family dramas; they are brutal little autopsies of the home as institution. Bright pink cover, absolutely no emotional mercy. Excellent.

ACA Publishing / Sinoist Books paperback, 2024. Translated by Will Spence, Olivia Milburn, Honey Watson and Martin Ward. Very good condition, with light general shelf and handling wear.