YAN LIANKE

SERVE THE PEOPLE

This political satire by one of China’s most distinguished authors has been banned in its native China, with propaganda ministers reportedly apoplectic about its depiction of the sexual revolution inside the People’s Liberation Army. The People’s Liberation Army has three rules of thumb: Don’t Say What You Shouldn’t Say Don’t Ask what You Shouldn’t Ask Don’t Do What You Shouldn’t Do Wu Dawang, 28 years old and a model soldier, is careful to abide by the rules. After his perfect recitations of Mao’s writings and his record-breaking preparation of ten courses of food, Wu has caught the eye of the Division Commander. However, he has also caught the eye of his Commander’s beautiful, bored 32-year-old wife, Liu Lian.

Wu and Liu become lovers and spend their days shut inside her house, where they discover that the sacrilegious act of breaking a statue of Mao increases their desire for each other. When they sense their passion waning, they smash her husband’s beloved Mao icons, rip up the Little Red Book or urinate on the Great Helmsman’s epigrams.

They become involved in a lovers’ game, a competition to see who can prove themselves the most counter-revolutionary by destroying the most sacred icons of their Great Leader. Lianke’s novel thus tramples on the most sacred taboos of the army, of the revolution, of sexuality and of the political rules of etiquette.

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.

‘On est en plein Ionesco.. et et les dernières pages du livre, mélancoliques et mystérieuses, permettent de mesurer la variété du talent du romancier.’ Figaro

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


Material: Finished copies (French and English edition 288 pages), Chinese text.

Sales: Claassen Germany; Stilo Libro (Einaudi) Italy; Japan & Taiwan (all Yan’s books published); Editions Philippe Picquier France; Podium NL; Constable UK; Text Publishing Australian & New Zealand; Grove Atlantic USA; Record Brazil; Kinneret Israel; Imprimatur Serbia; BB Art Czech; Editura Historia Romania; Teorema Portugal, Maeva Spain; Font Forlag Norway; Aschehoug Forlag Denmark; Ucila International Zalozba Slovenia.


DREAM OF DING VILLAGE

Again banned in China. Already published in France to great reviews: ‘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. Based on the true story of the infection with Aids of millions of Henan peasants through blood donation, this stunningly beautiful novel is about greed, passion, pain, betrayal, human nobility in the face of death and irrepressible life force, is one of the most powerful ever written. Deeply moving, life affirming with humour in unlikely places, only fiction like this can do justice to the horrible reality beneath. ‘Anger and passion are the soul of my work’ Yan Lianke says. Material: Finished French edition (238 pages), Chinese text. Sales: Constable UK; Editions Philippe Picquier France; Text Australia; Arkadas Turkey; Editora Record Brazil; Ullstein Germany.

Yan Lianke was born in 1958. He is the author of a huge number of novels and story collections, all remarkable for both their subject matter and their style. He has received many literary prizes, the most prestigious of which have been the Lu Xun in 2000 and the Lao She in 2004.