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Not so long ago, many Chinese commentators wrote in a cautious, oblique style designed not to offend the nation's famously humorless leaders — then came the Internet, blogs and a cheeky young man named Han Han.

The voice of China's post-'80s generation, Han is ironic, skeptical and blunt — writing what many young Chinese think but dare not say publicly.

Now 30 years old, Han has boy-band good looks, drives race cars and has 8 million followers on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

A collection of his satiric essays is out this month for the first time in English. It's called This Generation: Dispatches From China's Most Popular Literary Star (and Race Car Driver).

Han aims his sarcastic barbs at a wide range of targets in Chinese government and society, from the state education system:

— "I participated in quite a few essay competitions. Before each event, I had to first brainwash myself and check to see what slogans were in fashion."

To the rule of law:

— "We learned that the first article of the Constitution is: 'If we say you're guilty, you're guilty.' "

And the growing gap between the rulers and the ruled:

— "The main contradiction in China today is between the growing intelligence of the population and rapidly waning morality of our officials."

Enlarge Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

Blogger and race car driver Han Han doesn't shy away from skewering Chinese government and society.

A much-anticipated revival of The Heiress, a 1947 play based on the Henry James novella Washington Square, opens in New York on Thursday. It marks the Broadway debut of two accomplished young stars — Jessica Chastain, the Academy Award nominee from The Help, and Dan Stevens, from the hit television series Downton Abbey.

On the surface, the story of The Heiress seems simple enough — a wealthy young woman in Victorian New York is torn between her controlling father and a young, penniless suitor. Is the father being overprotective? Is the young man just a cad? But there's much more going on, says director Moiss Kaufman.

In his introduction to Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, Dan Wakefield, the book's editor and a longtime Vonnegut karass member, writes of the late author's aspiration to be a "cultivated eccentric." Over the course of six decades of letters to family, friends, admirers, detractors and fellow writers, Vonnegut shows himself to be so much more, both in terms of ambition and accomplishment. In fact, viewed in its totality, the collection — by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and mundane — is striking in just how uneccentric it shows the author to be. Vonnegut himself is a near-perfect example of the same flawed, wonderful humanity that he loved and despaired over his entire life.

Letters should be read as a necessary companion piece to Charles J. Shields' even-handed 2011 Vonnegut biography, And So It Goes. The Shields book reveals a successful but mostly unhappy man, one with a penchant for professional betrayals (he nixed an agreement with longtime friend and editor Knox Burger); an anti-war, liberal champion who had no problem investing in napalm manufacturer Dow Chemical.

The singular, iconic author was certainly complicated — and at times vain and quick to anger. Those critics who pigeonholed him as a sci-fi hack promptly felt the wrath of his epistolary ripostes. For example, six years after achieving lasting fame for his classic, Slaughterhouse-Five, a miffed Vonnegut felt compelled to write to Osborn Elliott, the editor of Newsweek, concerning a piece on science fiction written by Peter Prescott. Prescott's offending lines went like this: "Few sf [science fiction] writers aim higher than what a teen-age intelligence can grasp, and the smart ones, like Kurt Vonnegut, carefully satirize targets — racism, pollution, teachers — that teen-agers are conditioned to dislike." To which Vonnegut tersely replied, "I have never written with teen-agers in mind, nor are teen-agers the chief readers of my books. I am the first sf writer to win a Guggenheim, the first to become a member of the National Institute for Arts and Letters, the first to have a book become a finalist for a National Book Award." He goes on to list his undeniably impressive accomplishments and titles for several more lines.

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Kurt Vonnegut Was Not A Happy Man. 'So It Goes.'

Executives of the publishing giants Bertelsmann and Pearson announced on Monday that they will pursue a merger of their publishing houses, Random House and Penguin. The united publishing companies are set to become a large and influential force in publishing.