Lao She was born in 1899 to a poor Manchu family in Beijing. He left China in his mid-twenties to teach Chinese at the University of London, where he stayed for the next five years. Mr Ma and Son, also published by Penguin, was his third and final novel written during his London years, and was serialized in 1929.

Lao She continued to teach and write upon his return to China. He soon became an established and respected author renowned for his humorist style, but it was not until 1932 that he ventured into the realm of satire and science fiction with his searing dystopia Cat Country. He committed suicide in Beijing in 1966, a few years after being labelled an anti-Maoist and counter-revolutionary by the Red Guards.