He adds that such paradox only stresses how important the problem is, and the complication makes him want to understand it better.

In Trust, Partenza endeavors to accustom herself to men's thinking and write in a man's way, whereas in reality, Diaz's writing partly involves viewing the world with a woman's mind and hand.

To get to such a place, he absorbed the views of female writers he appreciates — Virginia Woolf, for example — as well as diaries and personal letters of wives of historical financial tycoons that have been untouched in libraries or archives for almost a century.

In Shanghai, amid a pressing schedule, Diaz was taken to visit the well-known matchmaking corner inside the Renmin Park, where crowds made up of anxious parents hang personal information about their adult children — age, educational background, income, family assets, contacts, and more — in search of an appropriate partner for them. Diaz was fascinated.

"There's a great novel there waiting to be written," he says. "Care and affection are universal." Parenthood — the intimacy and love, the patriarchal order and control that cuts across class and political divides — is another major concern in his novel.

According to Peng Lun, who runs indie literary publisher Archipel Press, a co-publisher of the Chinese edition of Trust, a Chinese edition for Diaz's other novel, In the Distance, is underway.

"Although Diaz only has two works published, he's a very mature novelist who knows exactly what he wants and has a strong ability to control it," Peng says.

He adds that literature, in essence, presents life and many foreign works are helping Chinese readers understand others more while getting to know themselves better.

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