Waste Tide is a chilling sci-fi novel about class war and trash in near-future China

In Chinese science fiction author Chen Qiufan’s debut novel Waste Tide, a young woman finds herself transformed and stuck in the midst of a vicious power struggle between factions in the polluted, fictitious Silicon Isle in Guiyu, China. It’s a near-future science fiction thriller that feels pressingly relevant in 2019, about the pressures that advanced capitalism and technology exert on the most vulnerable people on Earth.
Silicon Isle is a dump — literally. It’s where