He shells, she sells, why is she sore, the Chinese Under-Secretary of the Economy makes an unsuccessful attempt to recite the tongue-twister. But so what? You don’t need to speak English or French properly to purchase a Bordeaux vineyard. And who needs morals when you’ve come to invest?

Comrade Wang is visiting France with eight collaborators and six pretty bedroom comrades. Exceptional vineyards, luxury hotels, forests in Auvergne, genetic laboratories: everything is for sale in the discount store that France has become. And while the French may as smug as a philosophical factory worker, the Asian delegation will have no trouble taking advantage of their naive greed.

Until a new interpreter from the village of Lyon joins their merry crew. Comrade Wang is all sugar and spice for the lovely academic. Desire knows no borders, and their idyll could last… long enough to give us the shivers.

Stéphane Fière offers readers an expertly written and thoroughly enjoyable satire that takes aim at influential Chinese politicians and at French mediocrity. Playing with proverbs and tongue-twisters, international business-speak, spoken language and more, the author creates a singular and stunningly efficient language, that can make us laugh out loud… before we start to shudder. But what if the novel’s exaggerations were actually understatements?