From one of China's most highly regarded writers, winner of the Franz Kafka Prize and twice finalist for the International Booker Prize, Three Brothers is a beautiful and heartwrenching memoir of the author's childhood and family life during the Cultural Revolution In this heartfelt, intimate memoir, Yan Lianke brings the reader into his childhood home in Song County in Henan Province, painting a vivid portrait of rural China in the 1960s and '70s. Three Brothers is a literary testament to the great humanity and small joys that exist even in times of darkness. With lyricism and deep emotion, Yan chronicles the extraordinary lives of his father and uncles, as well as his own. Living in a remote village, Yan's parents are so poor that they can only afford to use wheat flour on New Year and festival days, and while Yan dreams of fried scallion buns, and even steals from his father to buy sesame seed cakes. He yearns to leave the...

From "China's foremost literary satirist" (Financial Times) comes a captivating new novel set at a religious training center in Beijing, focusing on the unlikely love story of a Buddhist nun and a Daoist priestAt the Religious Training Center on the campus of Beijing's National Politics University, disciples of China's five main religions—Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam—gather for a year of intensive study and training. In this hallowed yet jovial atmosphere, the institute's two youngest disciples—Yahui, a Buddhist jade nun, and Gu Mingzheng, a Daoist master—fall into a fast friendship that might bloom into something more.This year, however, the worldly Director Gong has an exciting new plan: he has organized tug-of-war competitions between the religions. The fervor of competition offers excitement for the disciples, as well as a lucrative source of fundraising, but Yahui looks on the games with...

Man Booker International finalist Yan Lianke has been lauded for his imaginative satire and insightful cultural critique as "one of China's greatest living authors" (Guardian). His internationally bestselling new novel, The Explosion Chronicles, follows the excessive expansion of a rural community from small village to megalopolis.With the Yi River on one side and the Balou Mountains on the other, the village of Explosion was founded more than a millennium ago by refugees fleeing a seismic volcanic eruption. But in the post-Mao era the name takes on a new significance as the community grows explosively from a small village to a vast metropolis. Behind this rapid expansion are members of the community's three major families, including the four Kong brothers; Zhu Ying, the daughter of the former village chief; and Cheng Qing, who starts out as a secretary and goes on to become a powerful political and business figure. Linked together by a complex web of loyalty,...

One dusk in early June, in a town deep in the Balou mountains, fourteen-year-old Li Niannian notices something strange about his town. Instead of settling down for the night, the residents start appearing in the streets and fields. There are people everywhere.Li Niannian watches, mystified. But then he realises the people are dreamwalking, carrying on with their daily business as if the sun hadn't gone down. And before too long, as more and more people succumb, in the black of night all hell breaks loose.Set over the course of one night, The Day the Sun Died sets chaos and darkness against the sunny optimism of the 'Chinese dream' promoted by President Xi Jinping. We are thrown into the middle of an increasingly strange and troubling waking nightmare as Li Niannian and his father struggle to save the town, and persuade the sun to rise again.Yan Lianke was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China. Text has published his novels Serve the...

Shortlisted, Man Asia Prize 2011 and the UK Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012 'I come from the bottom of society. All my relatives live in Henan, one of the poorest areas of China. When I think of people's situation there, it is impossible not to feel angry and emotional. Anger and passion are the soul of my work.' Yan Lianke A dead boy tells the bizarre tale of the life and death of an entire community in Henan province. His neighbours sell their blood and their coffins, and then arrange marriages for their own dead family members in the afterlife. Yan Lianke, author of the masterpiece Serve the People!, is a genius storyteller and fierce satirist, confronting the moving and absurd antics of people forced to live under an inhuman regime. 'A brilliant and harrowing novel…Carter does a crystalline translation of Lianke's brazen, unflinching portrayal of a community in the throes of collapse.' Publisher's Weekly

Over the last decade, Yan Lianke has been continually heralded as one of the "best contemporary Chinese writers" (The Independent) and "one of the country's fiercest satirists" (The Guardian). Among many awards and honors, he has been twice a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize and he was awarded the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize for his impressive body of work. Now, for the first time, his two most acclaimed novellas are being published in English. "Timeless" and "marvelous" (Asian Review of Books), Marrow is a haunting story of a widow who goes to extremes to provide a normal life for her four physically and mentally disabled children. When she finds out that bones "the closer from kin the better" can cure their illnesses and prevent future generations from the same fate, she feeds them a medicinal soup made from the bones of her dead husband. But after running out of bones, she resorts to a measure that only a mother can take....