Zhou Daxin's fictional biography follows the life of a man who grew up in poverty in China's Mao era and then rose through the ranks of government during the country's period of reform and opening up. It's a tale of love, leadership, betrayal, corruption, lust, greed and the nature of power amid the rise of the 21st century's new superpower.

What's left after a lifetime of service in the Chinese government?

At the age of 66, Ouyang Wantong, the former governor of Qinghe province, was too young to die. He touched the lives of so many people during his time on Earth. Some of them loved him intimately, while many more held him in the highest esteem. But there were also those who hated him and wished him dead. And now the battle to find his rightful place in the history books has begun…

After the Finale is a fictional biography of an extraordinary man who grew up in poverty in China's Mao era and then rose through the ranks of government during the country's period of reform and opening up. It's a tale of love, leadership, betrayal, corruption, lust, greed and the nature of power amid the rise of the 21st century's new superpower.

Born in Dengzhou, north-central China in 1952, Zhou Daxin is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist whose realist fiction mostly focuses on ordinary people in his home province of Henan. He made his literary debut in 1979 and has published nine novels, thirty-three novellas and more than seventy short stories, as well as essays and plays. In 2016, People's Literature Publishing House published Selected Works by Zhou Daxin, a twenty-volume collection of novels, novellas, short stories, essays and a screenplay. Zhou has received numerous awards, including the National Outstanding Short Story Award, the Feng Mu Literature Prize, the People's Literature Award, the Mao Dun Literature Prize, and the Lao She Prose Essay Award. His works have been translated into a dozen languages including English, French, German, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, and Greek. He currently resides in Beijing.