Director Feng Xiaogang, actress Fan Bingbing and author Liu Zhenyun at a promotional event in Beijing for Feng's latest movie I Am Not Madame Bovary.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Liu, a winner of China's top literary prize, the Mao Dun Literature Award, says the 2012 novel was his first book to take on a female's perspective.

Liu says at the same event that the book has been translated into nearly 20 foreign languages, including an English version by Sinologist Howard Goldblatt.

Known for his dark humor and keen observations on contemporary China, Liu has also seen international interest in his early works, including the famine-themed novel Remember 1942.

Speaking of I Am Not Madame Bovary, Liu says: "The movie has a unique sense of humor rarely seen. It makes you laugh from the beginning to the end.

"But when you return home, you'll start to think and examine it in a more in-depth fashion."

Feng says comedy can be classified into three forms - language, narrative and tale. And he feels the movie represents the highest form of humor, for it reflects the absurdity of real life.

"It's a kind of mirror. Viewers will see the lifestyle and people they are familiar with through the movie. In some senses, the characters' struggles can exist only in China and be understood only by Chinese," says Feng.