The Wang Zengqi Award-winning novel, The Lost Town, written by Zhao Benfu, is a double-lined story about a professor discovering a mysterious village and two heroes from the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45).

And from a publishers' viewpoint, 2017 yielded a bumper harvest for publishers of fiction.

Song Qiang, from the People's Literature Publishing House, tells China Daily it will be the first year that the publisher will exceed total raw earnings of 1 billion yuan, based on book prices.

"Novels' set prices play an important role in generating sales. We will boost our numbers of original titles by contemporary writers," Song says. The novel You Touched Me, written by Yan Geling and published by the People's Literature Publishing House in April, sold 600,000 copies and was turned into the hit movie Youth, directed by Feng Xiaogang.