Mai Jia talks with a Russian literature enthusiast.

In recent years, the works of Mai Jia, an acclaimed Chinese writer, have reached a growing global audience. His spy novel Decoded has been translated into more than 30 languages and stands as one of the most widely held Chinese works in libraries worldwide. It was named one of the Top 10 Books of 2014 by The Economist, and its English edition has been included in the prestigious Penguin Classics series — making Mai Jia the only contemporary Chinese author to join its ranks after literary giants Lu Xun (1881–1936), Qian Zhongshu (1910–1998), and Eileen Chang (1920–1995). Even in Russian universities, his novel The Colonel and the Eunuch now appears on reading lists.

Writing people over espionage

Mai Jia writes as if groping in the dark — searching for the people in his stories, and for his own self hidden within them.

The first figure he sought was a person wrestling with numbers in a secret chamber.

In the early 1990s, while spy novels were dominated by gunfire and explosions, Mai Jia resolutely chose to write about a decoder. "It is not espionage I want to write about, but people," he told himself, and said to those who doubted him.

He spent 11 years writing the book Decoded, collecting 17 rejection letters along the way, and trimming the manuscript from 1.2 million to 210,000 words. Every word was steeped in toil and perseverance.

The protagonist in the book, Rong Jinzhen, is not an "all-powerful agent" but an "imperfect hero." He embodies the coexistence of genius and solitude, and carries a tragic fate. Mai Jia confessed that in portraying Rong Jinzhen, he was also writing about himself — his fears, his inner turmoil, and the fragility hidden behind his talent.

In 2002, Decoded was finally published and immediately captured public attention. It was followed by works such as In the Dark and The Message, which ignited a nationwide craze for espionage-themed film and television adaptations in China, earning Mai Jia the title "Father of Spy Novels."

Yet beneath the acclaim, Mai Jia himself resisted being narrowly defined by the "spy novel" label. After completing Seven Killings, he publicly stated: "I have given my all to this genre. From now on, I will write no more spy novels."