Wang Xiaobo was born in 1952. From 1968 to 1970, he worked on a farm in Yunnan, China, as an 'educated' youth. He published Golden Age in 1992, first in Taiwan, but publication in China soon followed, where it was an immediate success, still topping bestseller lists today. Wang Xiaobo died of a heart attack in 1997, at the age of forty-four.
