The Mole

Set on the eve of the fall of Wuhan, The Mole tells of a father-son relationship misplaced by history and of entanglement in espionage. At the novel's opening, a list of underground Party members alerts the underground Party, Japanese spies, and the local underworld at once, and multiple forces engage in open and covert struggle over the list. The story therefore reaches back nearly twenty years: the infant Chinese child Chu Yunjie was abducted by Chu Wangting, head of the Japanese Black Dragon Society, who intended to raise him as a spy loyal to Japan; in 1930, the ten-year-old Japanese boy Qiu Zihao was brought to China by Chu Wangting and installed in the household of the Wuhan gang boss Qiu Guangyi, becoming Qiu Guangyi's adopted son and being sent by him into the Military Statistics Bureau, where he soon rose to head of the Hankou district group while secretly supplying Nationalist army intelligence to Chu Wangting. When Chu Yunjie grows up and becomes infatuated with the actress Liu Yun, his peaceful life is disrupted and, by a twist of fate, he takes the path of resistance against Japan; Liu Yun's true identity is an underground Party member operating in Hankou. From feigned dealings the two gradually develop genuine feeling, and they fight alongside underground Party members embedded in the Kuomintang, eliminating traitors and killing Japanese soldiers, ultimately shattering the Japanese plan to attack Wuhan and bringing Chu Wangting's half-lifetime scheme of deep cover to ruin. The book takes espionage maneuvering as its warp and the dislocation of blood ties and national loyalty as its weft, writing of the tear between family affection and national allegiance and of ordinary people's choices and perseverance in a time of chaos.