literature | asian studies
Discovering Fiction YAN LIANKE
Translated and with an Introduction by CARLOS ROJAS
Yan Lianke DISCOVERING FICTION
TRANSLATED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CARLOS ROJAS
“Yan Lianke is among the most innovative polemical fiction writers in contemporary Chinese and world literature. In Discovering Fiction, he demonstrates another facet of his talent: we see Yan as a sharp critic of fiction’s diabolic potential, a bold explorer beyond the boundaries of imagination and a zealous advocate of a world that is both surreal and hyperreal.”—DAVID DER-WEI WANG, author of Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China “Discovering Fiction gathers and illuminates Yan Lianke’s views and conceptions of literature. This rich volume also sheds light on Yan’s own masterpieces, such as Lenin’s Kisses and Dream of Ding Village. It’s the kind of literary criticism that is both useful and edifying.”—HA JIN, author of Nanjing Requiem
Over the past twenty years, Chinese novelist Yan Lianke has emerged as one of the most important writers in the world. In Discovering Fiction, Yan offers insights into his views on literature and realism, the major works that inspired him, and his theories of writing. He juxtaposes discussions of the high realism of Leo Tolstoy and Lu Xun against Franz Kafka’s modernism and Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realism, charting the relationship between causality, truth, and modes of realism. He also discusses his approach to realism, which he terms “mythorealism”—a way of capturing the world’s underlying truth by relying on the allegories, myths, legends, and dreamscapes that emerge from daily life. Revealing and instructive, Discovering Fiction gives readers an unprecedented look into the mind and art of a literary giant.
June 160 pages paper, 978-1-4780-1830-8 $23.95tr/£17.99 cloth, 978-1-4780-1567-3 $89.95/£72.00
SINOTHEORY A series edited by Carlos Rojas and Eileen Cheng-yin Chow
PRAISE FOR YAN LIANKE “Yan is one of those rare geniuses who finds in the peculiar absurdities of his own culture the absurdities that infect all cultures.”—The Washington Post “Yan’s subject is China, but he has condensed the human forces driving today’s global upheavals into a bracing, universal vision.”—The New York Times “China’s most controversial novelist . . . [A] preternatural gift for metaphor spills out of him unbidden.”—New Yorker “One of China’s eminent and most controversial novelists and satirists.”—Chicago Tribune “China’s foremost literary satirist. . . . [Yan] deploys offbeat humour, anarchic set pieces and surreal imagery to shed new light on dark episodes from modern Chinese history.”—Financial Times
Yan Lianke is the author of Hard Like Water, The Day the Sun Died, The Explosion Chronicles, The Four Books, and many other novels and story collections. Winner of the Franz Kafka Prize and a two-time finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, Yan teaches at Renmin University in Beijing and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Carlos Rojas is Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. He has translated several of Yan’s novels, including Hard Like Water, The Day the Sun Died, and The Explosion Chronicles.
“One of China’s most important—and certainly most fearless—living writers.” —Kirkus Reviews “A master of imaginative satire.”—The Guardian
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