Ninth Building is a fascinating collection of vignettes drawn from Zou Jingzhi’s experiencegrowing up during the Cultural Revolution, first as a boy in Beijing and then as a teenager exiledto the countryside. Zou poetically captures a side of the Cultural Revolution that is less talkedabout—the sheer tedium and waste of young life, as well as the gallows humor thataccompanies such desperate situations. Jeremy Tiang’s enthralling translation of this importantwork of fiction was awarded a PEN/Heim Grant.