From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male may be the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, relationship, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes from the classics The Handmaid’s Tale and When She Woke.

Under the One Child Plan, everyone plotted to truly have a son. Today 40 million of these can’t find wives.

China’s One Child Policy and its cultural choice for man heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By about An Excess Male: A Book the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of guys in their past due thirties won’t have a family of their very own. An Excess Male is one such leftover man’s search for like and family members under a State that looks for to glorify its past errors and impose order through authoritarian methods, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.

Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to boost himself, his small company, and subsequently, his nation, his chance in love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking discussions at the lowest rung as a third husband-the maximum allowed for legal reasons. Only a single family-one harboring an illegal spouse-shows interest, however with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything-walls, streetlights, garbage cans-are listening, and men, surplus or not, are dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a fresh understanding of patriotism and test the limitations of his love and his resolve to conserve himself and this family he has come to hold dear.

In Maggie Shen King’s startling and beautiful debut, An Excess Male looks to explore the intersection of relationship, family, gender, and condition within an all-too-plausible future.