Promotional Information

A satirical novel about the explosive growth of modern China, from the 2016 Man Booker International finalist Yan Lianke

About the Author

Yan Lianke was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China. Text has published his novels Serve the People!, Lenin's Kisses. Dream of Ding Village and The Four Books. Yan Lianke won the Hua Zhong World Chinese Literature Prize in 2013. He has also won two of China's most prestigious literary awards- the Lu Xan Prize and the Lao She Award. He lives in Beijing. Translator Carlos Rojas is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. His translations include two other novels by Yan Lianke- Lenin's Kisses and The Four Books.

Reviews

'A rip-roaring Swiftian satire from a contemporary Chinese master...Yan Lianke, one of China's most forthright and versatile novelists, enlists extravagant comedy and far-fetched fable to propel his critique of a society where 'power and money have colluded to steal people's souls.'... The reader slips into a literary China of poetry and mystery that flourished long before the boom.' Economist '[The Explosion Chronicles] has the absurdist feel of an Ionesco or Durrenmatt piece, though without any of the heavy-handed obviousness. Indeed, his satire is careful and crafty...it can be read as a kind of Swiftian satire...Brilliant.' STARRED Review, Kirkus 'Just one of the most wonderful novels I've read...He's [Lianke] known for his satirical writing but if this novels's anything to go by, there's an equally impassioned empathy which just exudes from his writing' Radio New Zealand 'This darkly absurd history trucks freely with the fantastic...but many of the more brazen events are taken straight from the news...Yan's burlesque of a nation driven insane by money is equally a satire of some of the excesses of the Chinese Revolution' Wall Street Journal 'A rip-roaring Swiftian satire from a contemporary Chinese master...Yan Lianke, one of China's most forthright and versatile novelists, enlists extravagant comedy and far-fetched fable to propel his critique of a society where 'power and money have colluded to steal people's souls'...The reader slips into a literary China of poetry and mystery that flourished long before the boom.' Economist 'A satire of ambition.' Sacramento News 'An epic page-turner...a multi-layered marvel...combining unflinching observation [and] stinging satire...Yan's mesmerizing ability to pull readers into this raw, subversive, not completely fictional world will continue to build his international audiences.' Library Journal '[Yan's] fiction has lampooned some of the darkest moments in Chinese history...In this latest work, however, Yan shifts his irreverent gaze from the past to the present and toward projections of the future, taking stock of China's vertiginous economic rise and the astonishing dissolution of its collective social conscience...The formal inventiveness of The Explosion Chronicles is impressive and its fictional universe vividly drawn...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