Ninth Building by Jingzhi Zou, Jeremy Tiang (translator)

'Ninth Building' is a collection of vignettes based on the author's life during the Cultural Revolution, first as a boy in Beijing and then as a teenager exiled to the countryside. Zou captures a side of the Cultural Revolution that is less talked about - the sheer tedium and waste of young life during this regime, as well as the gallows humour that accompanies such desperate situations.