Amid news of China’s decision to “muzzle the media” after last month’s train disaster, The New York Times ran a profile of author Chan Koonchung, whose Orwellian novel The Fat Years has been banned in China for its fictional – yet eerily accurate – portrait of life under authoritarian rule. Already an underground sensation in China, a translation of the novel will be published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday in January. Read the backstory here.