JULIA LOVELL is Professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of The Great Wall and The Opium War, which won the 2012 Jan Michalski Prize. Her many translations of modern Chinese fiction into English include The Real Story of Ah Q and Other Tales of China. She writes about China for several newspapers, including The Guardian, Financial Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.