'The defining work of his career; not just an elegantly crafted piece of literature but a devastating critique of China’s runaway development.' Jonathan Watts, Guardian

 

Officially censored upon its original Chinese publication, Dream of Ding Village is Chinese novelist Yan Lianke’s most important novel to date. Set in a poor village in Henan Province, it is a deeply moving and beautifully written account of a blood-selling scandal in contemporary China.

            As the book opens, Ding Village’s town directors, looking for a way to lift their village from poverty, decide to open a dozen blood-plasma collection stations. The directors hope to drain the townspeople of their blood and sell it to the villages near and far. Although the citizens prosper in the short run, the rampant blood selling leads to an outbreak of AIDS and a huge loss of life. Based on a real-life blood-selling scandal in eastern China, Dream of Ding Village is the result of three years of undercover work by Yan Lianke, who was an assistant to a well-known Beijing anthropologist studying a small village decimated by HIV/AIDS as a result of unregulated blood selling.

            Dream of Ding Village focuses on one village, and the story of one family, destroyed when one son rises to the top of the Party pile as he exploits the situation, while another is infected and dies. The result is a passionate and steely critique of the rate at which China is developing- and what happens to those who get in the way.

 

'Lianke's brazen, unflinching portrayal of a community in the throes of collapse makes for a brilliant and harrowing novel.' Publisher's Weekly

 

‘His lyricism of despair, full of frenzied life, even when there is foam on lips, gives this novel of Yan Lianke it’s atrocious grace.’ Le Monde

 

‘Yan Lianke denounces an alarming situation… his novel is a true revelation.’ Rolling Stone

 

‘A sorrowful but captivating novel about the price of progress in modern China. The book, which was censored in that country, builds to an act of violence that resonates with the impact of Greek tragedy or Shakespearean drama.’ Kirkus Reviews

 

‘With great humour, Lianke describes the group of ‘nearly-deads’ reviving the heart of the school, where they have gone to avoid contaminating their nearest and dearest, a collectivist enterprise that is a revealing mirror of Chinese society. An archaic, gangrened society where the absurd goes hand in hand with the tragic, where one does business in marriages between the dead while respecting the local bureaucracy’s orders, where making love before dying seems to recreate utopia. A tender story that cuts to the bone.' Transfuge

 

'Appearing in English at last, the banned Chinese novel Dream of Ding Village, by Yan Lianke is a furious satire of capitalism and corruption' Guardian

 

‘The novel is gripping, swift, heartfelt, occasionally exhilarating and often surprising, due in large part to the book's two big aces: the charming, naïve narrative voice of the dead boy and the dynamic, larger-than-life figure of grandpa, the central character and the only morally grounded citizen of Ding Village.’ Shelf Awareness

 

'Yan is clearly making a statement about the personal and spiritual prices paid for China's runaway development.' Lionel Shriver

 

'It reads like a fable, unmoored from time… Translator Cindy Carter has found a commanding English voice to accommodate Yan’s fluent dialogue, lyrical descriptions of nature, and melodramatic turns. Yan’s prose amply captures his outrage. Above all, it offers a window into a world American readers rarely see — in which, for example, AIDS sufferers defy death by boasting of how many steamed buns they can eat. In the end Dream of Ding Village works both as a horrifying social critique and, strange to say, as a perversely gripping Gothic tale. This novel delivers not only a front-lines message from Henan Province but also news of Yan Lianke’s skill as a messenger.' Boston Globe

 

“Dream of Ding Village paints a riveting and disturbing portrait of village life in the grip of epidemic. It's not a pretty picture. Chinese filmmakers, writers and artists of the post-Mao era often manifest in their work an almost visceral abhorrence for the peasantry mixed with compassion and despair. With Yan Lianke, it's personal. A native of Henan, Yan made seven visits to one such '’AIDS village’ there in 1996 in the company of a medical anthropologist. It was a story he had to tell….Dream of Ding Village is powerful and peerless.' Sydney Morning Herald

 

'A powerful look at the AIDS scandal in Henan Province during the 1990s, when many people became infected with HIV after selling their blood at private collection centers. Yan’s evocative novel focuses on one family at the heart of the tragedy in the fictional Ding Village. Ding Hui grew rich buying blood from the villagers and exposed many to HIV by reusing needles. Hui’s father, Shuiyang, believes Hui should take responsibility for the illness that has swept the village, but even the murder of his young son doesn’t sway Hui. Hoping to atone for Hui’s crimes, Shuiyang gets permission to use the school as a hospice for the many sick villagers. What starts out as an idealistic experiment in which the infected villagers work together to make their lives easier crumbles before Shuiyang’s eyes as the small community is plagued by theft and a corrupt duo who seizes power, while Hui continues to prey on the villagers by selling them coffins donated by the government. Communist ideals battle against capitalistic impulses and human nature in this grand, layered novel, a must-read for anyone interested in present-day China.' Booklist Online

 

'The first paper for my college English course, assigned by an American lawyer teaching in Beijing, was on whether China would see an Aids epidemic in the near future. It was 1992, and more than half of my classmates believed that a disease associated with irresponsible or corrupted lifestyles would not claim China. Yet in less than five years, an Aids epidemic broke out in Henan province (and in many other provinces), a result of a blood-selling enterprise established by government officials and business people, where the practice of reusing needles was common. Tens of thousands of peasants were infected; sometimes an entire village was wiped out. Officially censored upon its Chinese publication, and the subject of a bitter lawsuit between author and publisher, Dream of Ding Village is Chinese novelist Yan Lianke’s most important novel to date. Set in a poor village in Henan province, it is a deeply moving and beautifully written account of a blood-selling scandal in contemporary China. As the book opens, the town directors, looking for a way to lift their village from poverty, decide to open a dozen blood-plasma collection stations, with the hope of draining the townspeople of their blood and selling it to villages near and far. Although the citizens prosper in the short run, the rampant blood-selling leads to an outbreak of AIDS and huge loss of life. Narrated by the dead grandson of the village head and written in finely crafted, affecting prose, the novel presents a powerful absurdist allegory of the moral vacuum at the heart of communist-capitalist China as it traces the life and death of an entire community. Based on a real-life blood-selling scandal in eastern China, Dream of Ding Village is the result of three years of undercover work by Yan Lianke, who worked as an assistant to a well-known Beijing anthropologist in an effort to study a small village decimated by HIV/AIDS as a result of unregulated blood selling. Whole villages were wiped out with no responsibility taken or reparations paid. Dream of Ding Village focuses on one family, destroyed when one son rises to the top of the Party pile as he exploits the situation, while another son is infected and dies. The result is a passionate and steely critique of the rate at which China is developing--and what happens to those who get in the way.' Goodreads.com

 

'What a dilemma Yan Lianke must pose to his government. He's one of China's most celebrated writers, and among its most censored. In a career that spans 30 years, he's endured the repeated whipsaw of populist praise followed by official penalty. The publication in 2004 of The Joy of Living earned him both his nation's prestigious Lao She literary prize, and his ouster from the Chinese army. Now his scathing novel, Dream of Ding Village, which was banned just weeks after its publication in 2005, has come roaring onto the American marketplace in a vibrant translation by Cindy Carter. Dream of Ding Village begins as Ding Hui, the ambitious son of a local school teacher, persuades the people of tiny Ding village to follow the lead of the other towns in Henan Province and sell their blood for cash. Hui soon becomes a successful "bloodhead," with so many collection stations that when he runs short of supplies, he simply re-uses the needles and cotton swabs. The people of Ding village sell enough blood that they get wealthy. And then they get AIDS. Grotesque as it sounds, the set-up is rooted in the Chinese blood-selling scandal of the mid-1990s. In a government-sanctioned scheme, hundreds of thousands of residents in rural Henan Province sold their blood for eventual resale to international pharmaceutical companies. Unsafe medical practices led to an AIDS epidemic, unofficially estimated at close to one million cases.
Lianke, a native of Henan Province, plays with farce and satire and allegory as he spins his dark tale. His description of what has been lost is as mesmerizing as his critique of those to blame is merciless.' Barnes & Noble

 

'A powerful and shocking piece of work' The Big Issue

 

'One of the most prolific and bravest authors to come from China, brings us a disturbing chronicle of one village’s deterioration caused by ‘the spreading fever’'
Guardian

 

'Dream of Ding Village, is his fictional account of one of China’s most catastrophic cover-ups: the notorious blood selling scandal and subsequent Aids epidemic of the mid-1990s, when commercial companies, nicknamed ‘blood-heads’, cajoled peasants into flogging their blood for cash….. A grotesque parable of the dire consequences of China’s capitalist love affair and unrestrained development'
Independent

Constable UK;

 

Editions Philippe Picquier France;

 

Text Australia;

 

Editora Record Brazil;

 

Ullstein Germany;

 

Font Forlag Norway;

 

Grove Atlantic USA;

 

Nottetempo Italy;

 

Los Libros del Lince Spain;

 

Tiderne Skifter Denmark;

 

Riva Bulgaria.

 

Material: Chinese and French editions (238pp).

Serve the People! is the sexy, satirical sensation chronicling a love affair between the wife of a powerful Communist army commander and her household’s servant – a remarkable, profound and deliciously comic satire on Mao’s famous slogan and the political and sexual taboos of his regime, by one of the most important authors writing from inside China today.

 

Liu Lian, the young, pretty wife of a powerful Red Army Division Commander is left to idle at home while her husband furthers the revolution. In her boredom she begins to toy with the household servant – Wu Dawang, a conscientious and exemplary soldier – and decides to set a new rule. Whenever the household’s SERVE THE PEOPLE! sign is removed from it’s normal place on the dinner table and placed elsewhere, Wu Dawang is to stop what he is doing and attend to her needs upstairs. He dutifully vows to obey her instruction.

 

As life is breathed into the illicit sexual affair, Yan Lianke brilliantly captures how the model soldier becomes an eager collaborator with the restless and demanding Liu Lian, their actions inspired by primitive passions that they are only just discovering. The short affair culminates in three days of ravenous lovemaking, the peak of which is an evening in which the lovers compete to see who can prove themselves the most counterrevolutionary by destroying the compound’s most sacred Communist icons.

 

This fetishistic love story and insolent variation on the official History may have been banned in China but managed to find a huge audience on the internet, and gained praise as a subversive critique of official corruption, leadership hypocrisy and the insanity of the Cultural Revolution.

 

‘Drips with the kind of satire that can only come from deep within the machinery of Chinese communism. Eschewing broad comedy, Yan barbs the text with enough social criticism to receive a priceless blurb from the Central Propaganda Bureau.’ Financial Times

 

'Crackles with sexual tension as Yan Lianke peels back Mao’s revolution to reveal the broad vein of humanism that overcame the revolution.’ Patrick Tyler, former Beijing bureau chief, New York Times

 

‘A savagely funny satire of revolutionary politics and corruption, written in prose as crisp and lovely as its barbs are sharp. A red hot love story that also offers real insight into the Chinese language and imagination, Yan’s new book is a festive banquet of old-school sloganeering and modern temptation.’ Rachel Dewoskin, author of Foreign Babes in Beijing

 

'Lianke spares no one . . . 'Serve the People!' is a wonderfully biting satire, brimming with absurdity, humor and wit . . .the novel is exuberantly drawn in several shades of revolutionary red.' LA Times

 

'This passionate satire of clandestine, intimate privilege in an ostensibly classless, egalitarian society is exceedingly carefully written, so that it is at once funny, sad, and bitterly ironic on nearly every page. Oh, and sensual, too.' Ray Olson, Booklist (starred review)

 

‘A very funny, and sexy, satire’ Independent on Sunday

Ullstein Germany;

 

Einaudi Italy;

 

Japan (all Yan’s books published);

 

Editions Philippe Picquier France;

 

Podium NL;

 

Constable & Robinson UK;

 

Text Australia & New Zealand;

 

Grove Atlantic USA;

 

Record Brazil;

 

Kinneret Israel;

 

Imprimatur Serbia;

 

BB Art Czech Republic;

 

Polirom Romania;

 

Maeva Ediciones Spain;

 

Teorema Portugal;

 

Font Forlag Norway;

 

Aschehoug Forlag Denmark;

 

Riva Bulgaria.

 

Material: Finished copies of English, French and many more (228pp).