Yan Lianke

WINNER OF THE Dream of the Red Chamber Award for the World's Most Distinguished Novel in Chinese One dusk in early June, in a town deep in the Balou mountains, fourteen-year-old Li Niannian notices that something strange is going on. As the residents would usually be settling down for the night, instead they start appearing in the streets and fields. There are people everywhere. Li Niannian watches, mystified. But then he realises the people are dreamwalking, carrying on with their daily business as if the sun hadn't already gone down. And before too long, as more and more people succumb, in the black of night all hell breaks loose. Set over the course of one night, The Day the Sun Died pits chaos and darkness against the sunny optimism of the 'Chinese dream' promoted by President Xi Jinping. We are thrown into the middle of an increasingly strange and troubling waking nightmare as Li Niannian and his father struggle to save the town, and persuade the beneficent sun to rise again. Praise for Yan Lianke's books 'Nothing short of a masterpiece' Guardian 'A hyper-real tour de force, a blistering condemnation of political corruption and excess' Financial Times 'Mordant satire from a brave fabulist' Daily Mail 'Exuberant and imaginative' Sunday Times 'I can think of few better novelists than Yan, with his superlative gifts for storytelling and penetrating eye for truth' New York Times Book Review

The Day the Sun Died

Günler Aylar Yillar

Gao Aijun is a son of the soil of Henan’s Balou Mountains, and after a service in the Army, he is on his way back to his ancestral village, feeling like a hero. Close to his arrival, he sees a strikingly attractive woman walking barefoot alongside a railway track in the warm afternoon sun, and he is instantly smitten. She is Xia Hongmei and lives up to her name of “beautiful flower.” Hiding their relationship from their spouses, the pair hurl themselves into the struggle to bring revolution to their backwater village. They spend their days and nights writing pamphlets, organizing work brigades, and attending rallies, feeling they are the vanguard for the full-blown revolution that is waiting in the wings. Emboldened by encouragement from the Party, the couple dig a literal “tunnel of love” between their homes, where underneath the village their revolutionary and sexual fervor reaches a boiling point. While the unsuspecting villagers sleep, they sing revolutionary songs and compete in shouting-matches of Maoist slogans before making earth-moving love. But when their torrid relationship is finally discovered, and they have to answer to Hongmei’s husband, their dreams of a bright future together begin to fray. Will their great revolutionary energy save their skins, or will they too fall victim to the revolution that is swallowing up the country? A novel of rare emotional force and surprising humor, Hard Like Water is an operatic and brilliantly plotted human drama about power’s corrupting nature and the brute force of love and desire.

Hard Like Water

From "one of China's most successful writers" (The New Yorker), two masterful novellas exploring the stigma of mental illness, the sacrifices made for family, and the desire to leave behind a personal legacy

Two Novellas

The Years, Months, Days

قبلات لينين

Patlama Kayitlari

Four Books

Heart Sutra

Phong Nhã Tụng

A laugh-out-loud political and sexual satire about the Chinese Cultural Revolution, by the acclaimed author of Serve The People!

A serviço do povo

Cindy Carter

Banned in China, Dream of Ding Village is acclaimed Chinese novelist Yan Lianke’s most important and controversial novel to date— a passionate and steely critique of the rate at which China is developing—and what happens to those who get in the way.

Dream of Ding Village

Pensando a mio padre

En un pequeño pueblo de la sierra de Balou vive el joven Li Niannian, de catorce años. Una tarde, después de ponerse el sol, Niannian se da cuenta de que algo inusual está sucediendo. Los aldeanos parecen actuar dormidos; uno tras otro, van cayendo en un extraño episodio de sonambulismo colectivo. Ante los ojos del muchacho, da comienzo un desfile de vecinos que, como víctimas de una extraña epidemia, se levantan en mitad de la oscura noche para entregarse a sus deseos más ocultos y desatar un infierno. Con el paso de las horas, los saqueos y la violencia se extienden por la región. Mientras tanto, los funcionarios y líderes locales se hunden en el libertinaje o en delirantes fantasías de grandeza, ajenos al drama del pueblo. La pesadilla solo terminará cuando llegue la mañana y el sol vuelva a salir, pero el tiempo parece haberse detenido y, a la hora del alba, una insondable oscuridad llena aún el cielo hasta donde alcanza la vista. Yan Lianke, nos sumerge en esta historia siniestra y cautivadora en la que acompañamos a Li Niannian, a sus padres, e incluso al propio autor, transformado aquí en personaje, en un intento desesperado por salvar el pueblo del caos y la locura.

La muerte del sol

I Distrikt 99 i en kinesisk arbejdslejr gennemgår Forfatteren, Musikeren, Forskeren og Teologen – og hundreder andre som dem – et genopdragelsesprogram for at genskabe deres revolutionære iver. I spidsen for denne proces er Barnet, der excellerer i drakonisk regelmageri, overvågning og konfiskering af højt skattede bøger. Det er livet i Distrikt 99, og sådan har det været i lang tid. Men så rammer uvejret dem, og det efterfølges af de ”tre bitre år”. Staten overlader de indsatte til sig selv, og så starter kampen for overlevelse. Gennem fire skæbner fortæller De fire bøger - skrevet af den kinesiske forfatter Yan Lianke - historien om Den Store Hungersnød, en af de mest ødelæggende og kontroversielle perioder i kinesisk historie.

De fire bøger

Man Booker International finalist Yan Lianke has been lauded for his imaginative satire and insightful cultural critique as "one of China’s greatest living authors" (Guardian). His internationally bestselling new novel, The Explosion Chronicles, follows the excessive expansion of a rural community from small village to megalopolis. With the Yi River on one side and the Balou Mountains on the other, the village of Explosion was founded more than a millennium ago by refugees fleeing a seismic volcanic eruption. But in the post-Mao era the name takes on a new significance as the community grows explosively from a small village to a vast metropolis. Behind this rapid expansion are members of the community’s three major families, including the four Kong brothers; Zhu Ying, the daughter of the former village chief; and Cheng Qing, who starts out as a secretary and goes on to become a powerful political and business figure. Linked together by a complex web of loyalty, betrayal, desire, and ambition, these figures are the driving force behind their hometown’s transformation into an urban superpower. Brimming with absurdity, intelligence, and wit, The Explosion Chronicles considers the high stakes of passion and power, the consequences of corruption and greed, the polarizing dynamics of love and hate between families, as well as humankind’s resourcefulness through the vicissitudes of life.

A Novel

The Explosion Chronicles

From “China’s foremost literary satirist” (Financial Times) comes a captivating new novel set at a religious training center in Beijing, focusing on the unlikely love story of a Buddhist nun and a Daoist priest At the Religious Training Center on the campus of Beijing’s National Politics University, disciples of China’s five main religions—Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam—gather for a year of intensive study and training. In this hallowed yet jovial atmosphere, the institute’s two youngest disciples—Yahui, a Buddhist jade nun, and Gu Mingzheng, a Daoist master—fall into a fast friendship that might bloom into something more. This year, however, the worldly Director Gong has an exciting new plan: he has organized tug-of-war competitions between the religions. The fervor of competition offers excitement for the disciples, as well as a lucrative source of fundraising, but Yahui looks on the games with distrust: her beloved mentor collapsed after witnessing one of these competitions. Gu Mingzheng, meanwhile, has his own mission at the institute, centering on his search for his unknown father. Soon it becomes clear that corruption is seeping ever more deeply into the foundation of the institute under Director Gong’s watch, and Yahui and Gu Mingzheng will be forced to ask themselves whether it is better to stay committed to an increasingly fraught faith or to return to secular life forever—and nothing less than the fate of the gods itself is at stake. Illustrated throughout with beautiful original papercuts, animated by Yan Lianke’s characteristically incisive sense of humor, Heart Sutra is a stunning and timely novel that highlights the best and worst in mankind and interrogates the costs of division.

From the Franz Kafka Prize–winning author of Lenin’s Kiss, a “stupendous and unforgettable” novel of Mao’s China (The Times, London). In the ninety-ninth district of a re-education compound, freethinking artists and academics are detained to strengthen their loyalty to Communist ideologies. Here, the Musician and her lover, the Scholar, along with the Author and the Theologian, are subjected to grinding physical labor. They are also encouraged to inform on each other’s dissident behavior—for the prize of a chance at freedom. Their preadolescent supervisor, the Child, delights in reward systems and excessive punishments. But when agricultural and industrial production quotas are raised to an unattainable level, the ninety-ninth district dissolves into lawlessness. As inclement weather and famine set in, the people are abandoned by the regime and left alone to survive. Set inside a labor camp during Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Booklist calls The Four Books a “rich and complex novel,” from “China’s most heralded and censored modern writer” (The South China Morning Post).

The Four Books

'The new masterpiece by eminent Chinese writer Yan Lianke . . . two revolutionaries take matters disastrously into their own hands while conducting a crazed affair' MARGARET ATWOOD on Twitter A breakneck adventure story following the erotic love affair of party cadres Aijun and Hongmei during China's Cultural Revolution This is the story of the freewheeling love affair between married soldier Aijun and Hongmei, a beautiful young woman from his village in the Balou Mountains. Intoxicated with one another, Aijun and Hongmei hurl themselves into their town's revolutionary struggle. Spending their days and nights stamping out feudalism, writing pamphlets and organising rallies, they become inseparable: they are the engines of history. But as their political activity reaches new heights, so does the danger of getting caught... 'A blistering tour-de-force... Sensuous and riveting' MADELEINE THIEN, Booker-shortlisted author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing 'Fascinating... This tale of an illicit tryst during the Cultural Revolution is a stinging satire' The Times **A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST FICTION IN TRANSLATION BOOK 2021**

Yan Lianke

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