The Four Books

‘For once, the hype doesn’t go far enough…a devastating, brilliant slice of history.’ * Times *
‘Scathingly effective satire.’ * Thousands *
’The Four Books is a remarkable novel which brings to life an event which I knew about only in the abstract. * ANZ LitLovers *
‘A compelling account of the absurdities of the tragedy that killed an estimated 30 million people.’ * North and South *
‘Bleak but powerful, disturbing yet compelling.’ * National *
‘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…[Lianke] has produced an extraordinary novel.’ * Guardian *
‘The novel is driven by a cold fury at the events it recounts, its satire edged with Swiftian moral disgust…[Lianke’s] fiction of ideas feels hard won and genuine, an expression of sorrow, bafflement, anger, and love.’ * Rumpus *
‘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.’ * Financial Times *
‘Yan has created a complex, epic tale rife with allusion…The novel is a stinging indictment of the illogic of bureaucracy and tyranny, but the literary structure is tight and the prose incredibly accessible. Readers will have difficulty putting this down.’ * Publishers Weekly *
‘Yan Lianke well deserves to be in the Pantheon of great writers. He has no equal at attacking societal issues or the great Maoist myths in order to turn them into novels so breathtakingly powerful, shot through with black, often desperate, humor.’ * Le Monde Diplomatique *
‘Works of simple witnessing can be intensely powerful … like Yan Lianke’s The Four Books, which takes on the famines and mass deaths in China during the Great Leap Forward … Let’s hope that if democracy implodes and free public speech is suppressed, someone will record the process as it unfolds’ * Margaret Atwood, the Nation *

Yan Lianke has been called a ‘master of imaginative satire’ and named ‘one of China’s most successful fiction writers’ by the New York Times. His satirical stories, which often tackle sensitive subjects, have led to the banning of some of his works, including his novella Serve the People and the novel Dream of Ding Village. Yan’s surrealist writing oscillates between military themes and the Chinese countryside, lending the often absurdly miserable living conditions of rural life an equally surreal setting.

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