An extraordinary novel, one that both commemorates the state’s victims and defies China's state-sponsored amnesia. 1.1.2 Urbanization and social disparity between urban and rural sectors. 'No other writer in today's China has so consistently explored, dissected and mocked the past six and a half decades of Chinese communist rule. His translated works include Serve the People, Dream of Ding Village, about the blood-selling scandal in his home province of Henan, and. The Four Books shows Yan in top satirical form.' Yan Lianke is a Chinese writer based in Beijing. Divided into four narratives, The Four Books tells the story of the Great Famine, one of China’s most devastating and controversial periods. Forgetting can result from the passage of time.
urging him to think about the situation of his people in the process of social development. 'The amnesia I’m talking about is the act of deleting memories rather than merely a natural process of forgetting. In charge of this process is the Child, who delights in draconian rules, monitoring behaviour and confiscating treasured books.īut when bad weather arrives, followed by the ‘three bitter years’, the intellectuals are abandoned by the regime and left on their own to survive. When confronted, they all of a sudden have 'Abuse Amnesia', and claims their victim as being insane. Chinese writer Yan Lianke won the Kafka Prize in 2014.
In the 99th district of a sprawling labour camp, the Author, Musician, Scholar, Theologian and Technician – and hundreds just like them – are undergoing Re-education, to restore their revolutionary zeal and credentials. Reminiscent of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Darkness at Noon, Yan's mythical tale portrays the grotesque persecution during the Great Leap Forward.įrom master storyteller Yan Lianke, winner of the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize and a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, The Four Books is a powerful, daring novel of the dog-eat-dog psychology inside a labour camp for intellectuals during Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
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