'Anonymous, the keeper of the diary, deputy director of a publishing company in a nameless city in China, is a happily married man with a daughter until he succumbs fully to his sexual desires, forever searching for new erotic experiences and secret liaisons. Anonymous is able to hoard a fortune, by embezzlement or corruption, with which he buys permanent resident status for his wife and daughter in the West. He stays behind in China, a situation commonly referred to as a naked official in contemporary Chinese terminology, one who has nothing to fear when exposed because his family is safely installed overseas with all his money.' (Publication summary)
Epigraph:
Let ideals be declared void: beliefs, trifles; art, a lie; and philosophy, a joke...Let the mediocre speak of the consequences of pleasure: are not those of suffering even greater? Only the mediocre want to die of old age. Suffer, then, drink pleasure to its last dregs, cry or laugh, scream in despair or with joy, sing about death or love, for nothing will endure! Morality can only make life a long series of missed opportunities. –E. M. Cioran
He's the most renowned atheist, the most immoral Man...He practices the most thorough and complete corruption, and he is the wickedest and most nefarious person in existence! –Marquis de Sade
At birth, and death, our bodies naked are. –John Donne
I said to the men who liked me: Let's not talk about love; there is no love in the this world. -F03 (a woman who had had ten sex partners by 32)
