Books by Yan Lianke and Complete Book Reviews

Yan Lianke, trans. from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas. Grove, $27 (592p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2037-3
Both a blistering satire and a bruising saga, this epic novel by Yan (Dream of Ding Village) examines the grinding forces of communism and capitalism, and the volatile zones where the two intersect. Liven, a forgotten village located in the...
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Yan Lianke, trans. from the Chinese by Cindy Carter, Grove, $24 (352p) ISBN 978-0-8021-1932-2
Lianke (Serve the People!) confronts the black market blood trade and the subsequent AIDS epidemic it sparked, in a brilliant and harrowing novel. Ding village is ground zero for an AIDS epidemic that mushrooms after villagers are coerced into...
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Yan Lianke, Author, Julia Lovell, Translator , trans. from the Mandarin by Julia Lovell. Black Cat $14 (217p) ISBN 978-0-8021-7044-6
This spare, enigmatic novella of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution tells the story of the brief love affair between Wu Dawang, general orderly for a local division commander, and Liu Lian, the commander's bored wife. An ambitious model soldier of...
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Yan Lianke, trans. from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas. Grove, $26 (352p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2312-1
Yan, a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, pens a biting satire about Chinese re-education camps during the Great Leap Forward that’s as haunting as it is eye-opening. In this tale, intellectuals and dissidents are sent to a labor camp,
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Yan Lianke, trans. from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas. Grove, $26 (480p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2582-8
Lianke’s novel, a powerful, vividly imagined metafictional tale of a rural community’s rapid transformation into an urban metropolis, seeks to portray the “unrealistic reality... non-existent existence... impossible possibility” of life in...
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Yan Lianke, trans. from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas. Black Cat, $16 trade paper (208p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2665-8
Lianke’s talent for the fantastical shines in this collection of two novellas. In the title piece, an elder stays behind after a long drought drives his fellow village residents to more amiable climates; he claims he’d “surely die of exhaustion” if...
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Yan Lianke, trans. from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas. Grove, $26 (352p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2853-9
Yan (The Years, Months, Days) trains his fantastical, satiric eye on China’s policy of forced cremation in this chilling novel about the “great somnambulism” that seizes a rural town. Horrified to learn that the bodies cremated by his brother-in-law
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Yan Lianke, trans. from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas. Grove, $26 (224p) ISBN 978-0-8021-4808-7
In this loving, episodic memoir, Chinese novelist Lianke (The Explosion Chronicles) recalls his family’s experiences—specifically that of his father’s two brothers—during the 1960s and ’70s Cultural Revolution. After spending his teen years as a...
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Yan Lianke, trans. from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas. Grove, $28 (416p) ISBN 978-0-8021-6219-9
This intriguing satire from Yan (Hard Like Water) unfolds during a conference involving members of China’s five major religions: Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam. Yahui, a young Buddhist jade nun, attends a one-year program at
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