Ding Chen is a down-and-out novelist living in a Beijing courtyard in 1957. On the surface, he's a writer contributing to magazines. In truth, he's the present-day chronicler of the Book of the World. His golden finger, the Book of the World, is a mysterious jade pendant passed down through his family. It awakens when he resolves to use his writing to change the nation's fate. The book connects to a unique “underworld.” It isn't a place of punishment, but a multidimensional repository of knowledge.
