The Explosion Chronicles

‘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 Dürrenmatt 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 *

Yan Lianke was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China. He is the author of numerous story collections and novels, including The Day the Sun Died; The Years, Months, Days; The Explosion Chronicles, which was longlisted for the Man Booker International and PEN Translation Prize; The Four Books; Lenin’s Kisses; Serve the People!; and Dream of Ding Village. Among his many accolades, he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, was twice a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Man Asian Literary Prize, and the Prix Femina Étranger. He has received two of China’s most prestigious literary honors, the Lu Xun Prize and the Lao She Award. He lives in Bejing.

Carlos Rojas is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. He has translated Yan Lianke’s five most recent books.

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