The Four Books
  • Published: 2 May 2016
  • ISBN: 9780099569497
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $24.99

The Four Books

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One of China's most important novelists tackles the country's great remaining taboo -- the Great Famine, in which at least 45 million died

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2016

'One of China's greatest living authors and fiercest satirists' Guardian

In the ninety-ninth district of a sprawling labour camp, the Author, Musician, Scholar, Theologian and Technician - and hundreds just like them - are undergoing Re-education, to restore their revolutionary zeal and credentials. In charge of this process is the Child, who delights in draconian rules, monitoring behaviour and confiscating treasured books.

But when bad weather arrives, followed by the ‘three bitter years’, the intellectuals are abandoned by the regime and left on their own to survive. Divided into four narratives, The Four Books tells the story of the Great Famine, one of China’s most devastating and controversial periods.

WINNER OF THE FRANZ KAFKA PRIZE 2014
NOMINATED FOR CZECH AWARD MAGNESIA LITERA 2014
HUA ZHONG WORLD CHINESE LITERATURE PRIZE 2013
FINALIST FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2013
WINNER OF THE HUA ZHONG WORLD CHINESE LITERATURE PRIZE 2013
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE 2012
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX FEMINA ETRANGER 2012
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE 2011
WINNER OF THE LAO SHE LITERATURE AWARD 2004
WINNER OF THE LU XUN AWARD 1997
  • Published: 2 May 2016
  • ISBN: 9780099569497
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $24.99
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About the author

Yan Lianke

Yan Lianke was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China. He is the author of numerous novels and short-story collections, including Serve the People!, Dream of Ding Village, Lenin's Kisses, The Four Books, The Explosion Chronicles and The Day the Sun Died. He has been awarded the Hua Zhong World Chinese Literature Prize, the Lao She Literary Award, the Dream of the Red Chamber Award and the Franz Kafka Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the International Man Booker Prize, the Principe de Asturias Prize for Letters, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the FT/Oppenheimer Fund Emerging Voices Award and the prix Femina Étranger. The Day the Sun Died won the Dream of the Red Chamber Award for the World's Most Distinguished Novel in Chinese. He lives and writes in Beijing.

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Praise for The Four Books

A searing, allegorical view of Chinese society during some of the darkest moments of the Mao era. . . . Yan cements his reputation as one of China's most important—and certainly most fearless—living writers

Kirkus

One of the masters of modern Chinese literature, Yan Lianke gives all the pleasures one gets from reading. He can extract humour from the bleakest situation. I whole-heartedly recommend this latest book

Jung Chang

One of the masters of modern Chinese literature

Jung Chang

Yan's new work is vital historical testimony

Library Journal, US

A biting satire about Chinese re-education camps during the Great Leap Forward that's as haunting as it is eye-opening

Publishers Weekly

It’s a Chinese novel hailed across the planet as a masterpiece, and I’m normally the first to resist such an imposition before I’ve even opened the thing – but for once, the hype doesn’t go far enough... a devastating, brilliant slice of living history

Kate Saunders, The Times

Arch and playful... [Yan Lianke] deploys offbeat humour, anarchic set pieces and surreal imagery to shed new light on dark episodes from modern Chinese history... A brave, brilliant novel

David Evans, Financial Times

No other writer in today's China has so consistently explored, dissected and mocked the past six and a half decades of Chinese communist rule... it is an extraordinary novel

Isobel Hilton, Observer

A rich reading experience and much light shed on this catastrophic period of Chinese history

4 stars, New Internationalist

Woven together, these "texts" reflect the catastrophe of the times and meditate on the meaning of integrity, truth, love and ethics when confronted with horror. It is an extraordinary novel

Isabel Hilton, Observer

As a reader, you close the book with a profound sense of how ideology has permeated and changed very sector of collective human life, from trivial daily matters to the great ruptures of history

Xiaolu Guo, Guardian

A powerful satire on ideology, veering between the grotesque and the horrific

Ángel Gurría­-Quintana, Financial Times

Stark, powerful and compelling... A privilege

Independent

I would absolutely recommend this to individual readers and reading groups alike. It’s not an easy read considering the subject matter but it is a very good one.

Eleanor King, Nudge
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