The chieftain of the ethnic Tibetan Maichi family (right) and his third wife that he robbed from his headman. (Photo provided to China Daily)
"My biggest motivation to write the novel was to create a book about the history of the region. We all know the major points of Chinese history, but small local historical books are lacking," he says.
"Just like the Maichi chieftain's clerk in the novel, I continued his work to record the local history of that period of time," he says.
Besides Settling Dust, A Lai has published many other works, such as The Song of King Gesar in 2009, a novel based on Tibetan legend of King Gesar, the novel Empty Mountain in 2005, the novella Silversmith in the Moonlight in 1999, and the novellas Fairy Rings and Three Grassworms in 2015.
Actress Xu Fan plays the role of the chieftain's second wife, a woman of Han ethnicity and mother of the central character, the "idiot". (Photo provided to China Daily)
Regarded as a Tibetan Games of Thrones by younger Chinese readers, Settling Dust similarly contains torture, cruel deaths, desire, adultery, love, intrigue, rivalry between siblings jostling for power and revenge, as well as mysticism and the practice of witchcraft.
Guan Zhengwen, chief director and one of the scriptwriters for the play adaptation, hails the novel as an allegory for the entire human race. As one of the first readers of the book, he fell in love with Settling Dust immediately.
"Now 20 years have passed, and I still believe it is one of the best works in contemporary Chinese literature," Guan says.
In 1997, three years had passed since A Lai completed Settling Dust, but all the market-driven publishers rejected his manuscript.
"They said it's a good novel, but the masses would not like it because it wasn't a trendy topic, which did not convince me. Why wouldn't people want to read a good work?" A Lai says
