I was a little disappointed in Seattle last night; only about 25 people came out for a discussion between Sherman Alexie, Chinese satirist Yan Lianke, and Indian novelist Rahul Bhattacharya. (Admittedly, yesterday's rare appearance from the sun did make it hard to descend into the belly of Elliott Bay for the reading; across the street in Cal Anderson Park, everyone was having fun and lounging while pale book-lovers descended beneath the earth like naked mole rats.) Still, Bhattacharya said Seattle was the best-attended reading of the tour so far (four people in Portland bothered to show up), and the audience asked some of the best questions I've heard at a reading in ages, so we represented ourselves pretty well in comparison.

Lianke spoke through a translator about the process of publishing his most recent novel about the AIDS epidemic in China, Dream of Ding Village. On the date of the book's publication, the publisher had to send a dozen copies to the censors for examination. After the examination, they seized about half the shipments of the book, the publisher had to issue "a declaration of self-criticism," and they were not allowed to advertise the book at all. Alexie asked if e-books could get around the government's wall of censorship, and Lianke said that no, the government had an even tighter grip on technology than they did on traditional publishing. When Alexie said that his book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian had only been banned at 45 schools across the country last year, Lianke expressed surprise that Americans banned books at all, saying, "I don't feel so lonely anymore."

Bhattacharya read an excerpt from his novel, about an Indian cricket journalist who travels to Guyana. The excerpt featured chicken-fuckers and the man with the longest dong in Guyana (everyone knew about his dong because all the prostitutes in town refused him). He praised the Caribbean for being a "gorgeously vulgar part of the world," which led to questions about whether he felt like a regional writer. He said he did not; he was raised in a stew of languages and he doesn't feel rooted in any single region. Lianke, however, took the opposite, hyper-regional perspective. He said he considers himself to be a "Faulknerian" author. If he can understand one tiny part of the world, he believes his work can be understood on a global level. He said Chinese literature is all about realism right now, because China is in such a complicated place that fiction would only simplify things. The talk covered so much more—about how AIDS in China spread thanks to the money-making amateur phlebotomy trend that spread through the country, how Thomas Friedman is the most popular American author in India right now, how Americans who like cricket are maybe assholes—and my only real complaint about the discussion is that more people didn't get to hear it.