"Murder is like any other act. Sometimes it’s no more than a nudge. A small act — and suddenly, you’re a different person."
New.
The Next Disappeared (下一个消失者) is a literary suspense novel set between Europe and China. When a driver vanishes without trace, a female investigator is pulled into a case that leads far beyond a disappearance — into hidden financial networks and the fragile lives caught within them. The novel was a prize winner at the Himalaya Suspense Novel Competition.
Author.
Yue Tao is a novelist based in Amsterdam who writes in Chinese and English. She is the author of three novels, as well as short fiction and essays. Her prize-winning mystery novel The Next Disappeared (下一个消失者) has garnered millions of listeners on audio platforms, while her debut novel Red Cricket (红蟋蟀) has been translated into English and Dutch.
Writing.
Yue Tao’s fiction is shaped by in-betweenness: belonging everywhere and nowhere at once. Its tension comes from concealment — the stories people tell themselves and the secrets they protect. Moving between cultures and systems of power, her novels explore moral ambiguity in its most intimate forms.
Reviews.
Annelous Stiggelbout, translator.
Yue Tao’s complex, intricate plot takes the narrator—and reader—on an odyssey through Amsterdam subcultures, high and low. Like her first book Schemering boven Shanghai, this, the sequel kept me on the edge of my seat. Highly recommended!
Sun Mengjin, literary critic.
Yue Tao evokes repressed pain—the homesickness felt anytime, anywhere by estranged outsiders. Her strength is cross-cultural understanding, subtly highlighting the unpredictability and absurdity of life through a tight story with a rich—almost sensual—texture.
Meng Chang, journalist.
Yue Tao swings back and forth, effortlessly, between Chinese psychology and Dutch mentality. Her sharp observation, unsentimental storytelling, and suspenseful plot excite the reader’s imagination as well as emotion.
Peter Potman, diplomat.
In her debut novel, Yue Tao weaves a fascinating tapestry whose threads are modern metropolitan China and the dark unconquered past of the Cultural Revolution everyone wants to forget while it keeps creeping back.
"Page-turners. Clear and forceful, intricate and gripping, sensitive and utterly convincing. Dry, delicious humor."
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I have found a balance between my home and host countries—visiting China is a stimulus; living in Holland allows reflection, concentration, application. I need both.
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Writing lets me understand myself and my culture better. Wherever I go, I am thoroughly Chinese; the farther I go and the longer I stay away, the more Chinese I feel.
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It was only when I went abroad that I realized writing also entails disengagement, observation, empathy, and reflection—writing needs distance.