The houses in the Re-Education district parted the heavens and split the earth. The great earth and the mortal path returned together.Īfter autumn, the vast wilderness was leveled, and the people appeared small and insignificant. The Bible’s influence is obvious from the title - the four Christian gospels - as well as the Biblical look and feel translator Rojas sought to bring to this work. Gospel according to YanĪt the Litfest book club, Yan’s publisher Laura Susijn tells us that Yan used three literary touchstones for The Four Books: the Bible, magic realism and Catch-22. I want to see how a novelist, who’s spent his entire life inside China, navigates his way through the world of censors. It could have been a line out of a Yan Lianke novel. The next week, it damns her for once describing China as a country where there are lies everywhere. One week, China exults in Beijing-born director Chloe Zhao winning a Golden Globe. Beijing grows more Kafkaesque by the day. Yan’s publisher Laura Susijn and his long-time translator Carlos Rojas would speak. The Litfest International Fiction Book Club would discuss Yan and his Four Books in January. Then the book languished on my to-be-read pile until Twitter woke me up. When Yan won the Kafka Prize in 2014 for his novel, The Four Books, I rushed out to buy it. In the Re-Ed 99, these criminals perform hard labor in an attempt to curry favor and thus freedom. Re-Ed 99 is home to the worst dregs of Chinese society: intellectuals. The Four Books is set inside a re-education camp in 1950s China. To find a copy of one of his novels in the original Chinese, you’ll need to travel to Taiwan. Beijing responded by banning almost all of Yan’s books. He’s written more than a dozen novels, none of which flattered the ruling regime. Yan Lianke is a preeminent critic of Chinese society.
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