Tilman Spengler Die Stirn, die Augen und die Nase (The Brow, the Eyes and the Mouth) Rowohlt Verlag, 1999. 320pp. ISBN 3 498 06274 3 Following his treatment of Lenin's Brain, the masterly satirist Tilman Spengler now turns his attention to Mao's eyebrows. The setting is China, the time 1986, when, ten years after the death of Mao, elements of the market economy were being introduced. The plot concerns a group of discontented individuals who wish to show up the repressive government by making it lose face: by hoisting flags with the wrong number of stars, and, above all, by destroying a portrait of Mao. Among those involved is Viola, a German, whose Jewish parents found refuge in China during the years of the Third Reich. On her marriage to a Chinese worker she gave up her German passport, but when her husband starts to beat her she has second thoughts. Then there is Bao, an artist whose job is to paint the eyebrows on pictures of Mao, and his Chinese friend, generally referred to as the 'lightning gatherer'; Lu, an antique dealer and forger; Linus a Chinese-American sinologist (and agent of the CIA on the side); Paul, an American diplomat; Gudrun, a somewhat unconventional civil servant at the Consulate in Shanghai; and another Bao, a doctor, who treats his namesake and is instrumental in foiling the plot. Spengler, himself a sinologist, gives us a harsh portrayal of many aspects of Chinese life. His masterful blending of historical fact with fiction - and farce - means that, despite an ostensibly serious theme, this post cold war (almost postmodernist) yarn sparkles with satirical humour. The officials may pretend that nothing has happened, and even that Viola, with her German passport restored and about to leave for Hong Kong, never existed. But the inescapable result is that the people, angered by the attack on Mao's portrait, will become closer to their masters than ever. Here, in short, is plenty of action, an original read with an authentic background, and a good example of the move in recent German literature away from purely German themes.