Hong Tao, 30-years-old, moved from the countryside to Beijing with an inheritance he wants to hide from the world. His father was a famous Mao portrait painter and, obsessed with him, started tattooing Mao’s image on human skin. It’s a strange secret that new collectors want to get their hands on.

A shudder-inducing reckoning with the iconography of the Cultural Revolution, this remarkable debut from Liu Bingjian follows its wild premise to inevitable ends. With lush flashbacks to the height of the Mao regime, The Back brings a genre flourish to its interrogation of the ghosts of the past.