Yan Lianke is the author of the memoir Three Brothers and numerous novels and novellas, including The Day the Sun Died, The Explosion Chronicles, The Four Books, Lenin's Kisses, Serve the People!, Dream of Ding Village, and The Years, Months, Days. Among many accolades, he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, he was twice a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, and he has been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Man Asian Literary Prize, and the Prix Femina Étranger. He has received two of China's most prestigious literary honors, the Lu Xun Prize and the Lao She Award.
Praise for Hard Like Water: A New York Times Book Review Editors'
Choice
Named a Most Anticipated Book by the Guardian and Book Riot"The
novel, a parody, sets itself up as a kind of Maoist Anna Karenina
when Aijun arrives home and spots a beautiful young woman at the
train station, portending a conclusion just as disastrous and
physically gruesome as Tolstoy's . . . At its core, Hard Like Water
seeks to make a mockery of claims to political purity. As Hongmei
and Aijun arouse each other with propaganda slogans and
revolutionary citations, the novel pokes fun at how easily an
ideology can be contorted to satisfy individual desires."--Jennifer
Wilson, New York Times Book Review"A blistering tour de force that
wraps itself in ideological language in order to pull out that
language by the roots . . . Carlos Rojas's exceptional translation
makes English feel new again. Yan's linguistic daring, and the
novel's relentless stream of provocative images and observations,
create a sensuous and riveting world . . . A sharp, desperately
moving analysis of the logic of ideology. Its mashup of literary
and political texts poses the uncomfortable and timely question:
how did each of us arrive at our certainties?"--Madeleine Thien,
Guardian"Like some Bonnie and Clyde of Maoist fanaticism, Aijun and
Hongmei set about smashing every bond of family and friendship in
pursuit of their blood-red new dawn. Yet self-awareness, even a
guilty conscience, never quite deserts this monstrous couple, 'not
only a pair of great revolutionaries but also a pair of abject
adulterers.' That inner conflict gives this book its pulse and
point . . . Yan lets us share the aphrodisiac high of revolutionary
madness even as he skewers the tyranny of narcissism--and the
narcissism of tyranny. Book-burnings, ritual degradations, the
arrogant conceit of vanguard youth: his Red Guard era feels both
far away and oddly close to home."--Boyd Tonkin, Financial
Times"Boisterous . . . In speech larded with Mao quotes and
traditional maxims, Gao reveals how their romance, fuelled by the
feverish political climate, pitches the village into
ever-escalating extremism--a years-long parade of self-advancing
schemes culminating in an unthinkable end."--New Yorker"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
difficult but fascinating work, a novel in which the reader is
constantly urged to measure the discrepancy between what's being
said and what's happening . . . Jonathan Swift said satire is a
mirror in which we see everyone's features but our own . . . Yan's
challenge, to his samizdat readers in China and those beyond, is to
look in the murky glass of ambition and self-deception and find the
face that resembles their own."--John Phipps, Times (UK)"[Hard Like
Water] succeeds in using sensuality as a means to illuminate the
period's interwoven desires, from the physical to the ideological.
Gao is all nerve endings, his eyes and ears are always on the
alert, his hands ever eager to reach out and touch people and
things. The revolution itself has become sexual for him, and Yan
brilliantly makes us see how odd--yet natural--that is. But, if the
novel dovetails sexuality and revolution, it also depicts the
conservatism that opposes sexual freedom . . . By examining this
intractable conflict--between freedom and containment--without
flinching, Yan proves to be a social analyst of impressive power .
. . An important book."--Maxwell Olin Massa, Arts Fuse"An epic tale
of love and lust, betrayal and corruption, set in a reverential
village in Henan's Balou Mountains in the tumultuous days of the
Cultural Revolution. The story of an all-consuming (and actively
revolutionary) affair between two married party members, it's an
erotic political tragicomedy of Shakespearean proportions."--Dan
Sheehan, Literary Hub"Part political commentary and part romance,
this book contains extensive reflections on the philosophies behind
the revolutionary thought of the time and descriptions of how the
characters became involved in helping advance these ideas . . .
Satisfying."--Susan Huebert, Winnipeg Free Press"A gritty,
memorable story of love in a time of choler . . . Yan's study of
power and class struggle becomes, in the end, a near-classic
tragedy with the subtlest of nods to his version of magical
realism. Admirers of Yan's work won't be disappointed."--Kirkus
Reviews (starred review)"Yan probes the darkness and absurdity of
Chinese society and history with a sexy satirical tale of the
Cultural Revolution as wrought in a small village . . . Yan's
exuberant and unflinching tragicomedy is undeniably
appealing."--Publishers Weekly"In China, notes Yan's Anglophone
enabler-of-choice Rojas, there exists 'a literary subgenre known as
"revolution plus love," which was popular . . . in the late 1920s
and 1930s.' Always rather subversive, Yan transplants this subgenre
into the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution to showcase 'the
erotics of revolutionary activism' as exemplified by an impossible
love story . . . Yan's signature biting wit creates another
indelible work of bittersweet humor and sociopolitical
insight."--Terry Hong, Booklist"Filled with snippets of political
propaganda, Yan's book displays the degree of risk one may be
willing to undertake, and the hardships one may endure, when
striving to overcome oppression with hopes of personal gain . . . A
must-read for those familiar with Yan's writing."--Library
JournalPraise for Yan Lianke Winner of the Franz Kafka Prize
Two-Time Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize "Yan is
one of those rare geniuses who finds in the peculiar absurdities of
his own culture the absurdities that infect all
cultures."--Washington Post"China's most controversial novelist . .
. [A] preternatural gift for metaphor spills out of him
unbidden."--New Yorker"Yan's subject is China, but he has condensed
the human forces driving today's global upheavals into a bracing,
universal vision."--New York Times Book Review"One of China's
eminent and most controversial novelists and satirists."--Chicago
Tribune "His talent cannot be ignored."--New York Times "China's
foremost literary satirist . . . He deploys offbeat humor, anarchic
set pieces and surreal imagery to shed new light on dark episodes
from modern Chinese history."--Financial Times "[Yan is]
criticizing the foundations of the Chinese state and the historical
narrative on which it is built, while still somehow remaining one
of its most lauded writers."--New Republic "There is nothing
magical about Yan Lianke's realism . . . [with his] unflinching eye
that nevertheless leaves you blinking with the whirling absurdities
of the human condition."--Independent "One of China's most
important--and certainly most fearless--living writers."--Kirkus
Reviews "The work of the Chinese author Yan Lianke reminds us that
free expression is always in contention--to write is to risk the
hand of power."--Guardian
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