Yu Hua's fifth novel is a deeply moving reflection on modern Chinese life A melancholic, beautiful, dreamlike novel about a dead man visiting the people he loved in his lifetime Yu is a bestselling writer and literary star in Asia, and is regarded by many as China's greatest living writer. A former dentist, he has been a strong voice in Chinese fiction for over twenty years, and is now a regular contributing columnist to the New York Times The Seventh Day received 700,000 pre-orders when it was published in China in 2013. There are six million copies in print of Yu's debut novel, To Live Yu says The Seventh Day 'addresses the realities of China in this current era. It relates a man's experiences in the first seven days after his death; the world of the dead offers a relief from the sorrow and inhumanity that permeate the world of the living. It's a novel that criticizes Chinese social realities by recalling episodes from a succession of broken lives, and I personally feel that it is a powerful piece of work.'.