Poison

Poison is an early commemorative "wit-and-quote collection" published by Han Han, not a novel. The 2002 edition from China Youth Publishing House has three parts: the first is photographs taken by the author on his travels; the second is essays on everyday topics such as travel, time, speed, weather, and Hong Kong versus the mainland, written with a sardonic tone; the third consists of sentences and passages the author considers his best, excerpted from three works—Triple Door, Below Zero, and Like a Teenager Flying. In his own account, Han Han says he considers story secondary in fiction and language and mood all-important, so he deliberately gathered these favored fragments as a memento of his first three years as a published writer. The book stirred some controversy after publication: some readers felt most of it was excerpted from earlier work, but the author himself said he was very fond of this little book. It was reprinted several times; the 2013 Tianjin People's Publishing House edition expanded into a collection of memorable lines from novels including Triple Door, Like a Teenager Flying, Chang'an Chaos, A City, Days of Glory, His Country, and 1988: I Want to Talk with the World—its contents are not entirely the same as the 2002 edition. Note the edition differences when reading: Poison is better treated as a cross-section of Han Han's early style and verbal wit than as a new work with a complete narrative.