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 is the author of works including Dream of Ding Village, The Day the Sun Died, The Four Books, Three Brothers, and Hard Like Water. He has been awarded the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Royal Society of Literature International Writer Lifetime Award, and was twice a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize. He has received two of China’s most prestigious literary honors, the Lu Xun Prize and the Lao She Award. He was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.