Hard Like Water

‘The new masterpiece by eminent Chinese writer Yan Lianke … two revolutionaries take matters disastrously into their own hands while conducting a crazed affair.’ * Margaret Atwood *
‘A master of imaginative satire. His work is animated by an affectionate loyalty to his peasant origins in the poverty-stricken province of Henan, and fierce anger over the political abuses of the regime.’ * Guardian *
‘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 is one of the best contemporary Chinese writers.’ * Independent *
‘An indefatigable tale of love, delusion and revolution. Yan Lianke speaks to the agitation and absurdity of human existence, and the unquenchable need to believe in a cause greater than ourselves.’ * Jessica Au, author of Cold Enough for Snow *
‘Yan’s great subject is false consciousness, the way we knowingly come to participate in a world that doesn’t resemble reality…Hard Like Water is a difficult but fascinating work, a novel in which the reader is constantly urged to measure the discrepancy between what’s being said and what’s happening…Yan’s challenge, to his samizdat readers in China and those beyond, is to look in the murky glass of ambition and self-deception and find the face that resembles their own.’ * The Times *
‘Yan lets us share the aphrodisiac high of revolutionary madness even as he skewers the tyranny of narcissism—and the narcissism of tyranny…“Everyone will be assessed and judged,” Aijun warns. Now, even in the west, that note of vengeful purity sounds again.’ * Financial Times UK *
‘It’s surreal, and amusing, biting and fun.’ * Australian *
‘An important book, if only because of its refreshingly sensual vision of the appeal of the Cultural Revolution…[I]n our era of heightened political tensions, with conservatives and progressives polarized, the experience of an ambitious Chinese revolutionary convinced of his correctness has much to tell us about ourselves.’ * Arts Fuse *
‘You might not think that China’s Cultural Revolution would be the typical setting for eroticism, but then again, this era of heightened tension is perfect for this kind of fever-pitched romance.’ * Happy Mag *
‘A blistering tour de force…Carlos Rojas’s exceptional translation makes English feel new again. Yan’s linguistic daring, and the novel’s relentless stream of provocative images and observations, create a sensuous and riveting world… Hard Like Water is neither mockery nor satire; it is a sharp, desperately moving analysis of the logic of ideology. Its mashup of literary and political texts poses the uncomfortable and timely question: how did each of us arrive at our certainties?’ * Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing, in the Guardian *

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 with often 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, which lend the often absurdly miserable living conditions of rural life an equally surreal setting.

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