So, with the help of Jiangsu's provincial committee for discipline inspection, he got the material of 633 corruption cases from all over the country and started his two-year work. In the end, he chose 28 typical cases and talked to 13 senior officials in person to get firsthand material.

"I almost broke down during the process. It was hard to do the investigation and interviews, but the most difficult part was when I tried to find the logic of the corruption cases.

"I needed to dive into the hearts of those officials, follow their logic and identify their emotions," he says, "and often their twisted minds angered me."

"So for a while, I felt I couldn't continue," he adds.

Based on the material and interviews, Ding summarized similar cases and rewrote the stories, so that some stories in the book are a combination of several cases.

Gu Yicheng, who has been doing discipline inspection for more than 20 years, dismisses many fictional works about corruption.

"Many are made-up stories, telling how corruption of an official was disclosed by his mistress, or by a thief who broke into his house, without showing the determination of our Party and government to fight corruption and the efforts of discipline inspection departments," he says.

"But Zhui Wen depicts the real things about corrupt officials, the dark side of human nature like cowardice, greed and shamelessness. Ding shows how these originally kind, smart and hard-working people gradually took the wrong road. He gave the stories a human face, which is real and strong," he says.

Li Chaoquan, a deputy director with China Writers Association, says Ding's writing reveals the essence of the cases - bad and ugly - to give people a warning.