Financial Times
“China’s foremost literary satirist. . . . [Yan] deploys offbeat humour, anarchic set pieces and surreal imagery to shed new light on dark episodes from modern Chinese history.”
Chicago Tribune
“One of China’s eminent and most controversial novelists and satirists.”
Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China - David Der-wei Wang
“Yan Lianke is among the most innovative polemical fiction writers in contemporary Chinese and world literature. In Discovering Fiction, he demonstrates another facet of his talent: we see Yan as a sharp critic of fiction’s diabolic potential, a bold explorer beyond the boundaries of imagination and a zealous advocate of a world that is both surreal and hyperreal.”
The Washington Post
“Yan is one of those rare geniuses who finds in the peculiar absurdities of his own culture the absurdities that infect all cultures.”
New Yorker
“China’s most controversial novelist . . . [A] preternatural gift for metaphor spills out of him unbidden.”
The Guardian
“A master of imaginative satire.”
Waiting - Ha Jin
“Discovering Fiction gathers and illuminates Yan Lianke’s views and conceptions of literature. This rich volume also sheds light on Yan’s own masterpieces, such as Lenin’s Kisses and Dream of Ding Village. It’s the kind of literary criticism that is both useful and edifying.”
New York Times
“Yan’s subject is China, but he has condensed the human forces driving today’s global upheavals into a bracing, universal vision.”
