Yan Lianke’s fantastical satire about a culture so obsessed with an ever-expanding lust for power and money that it has forgotten its soul
- Shortlisted
- The Man Booker International Prize 2016
- Published by Chatto & Windus
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Yan Lianke’s compelling novel tells the story of one of China’s most controversial periods, the Great Famine, in which at least 45 million people died
1958, China. In a sprawling labour camp like hundreds of others, inmates must meet challenges set by the higher-ups: to grow an ever-spiralling amount of wheat and to smelt vast quantities of steel. The stakes are high: they can win their freedom if they collect enough red blossoms, awarded for effort, obedience and informing on others. But when bad weather arrives, followed by three bitter years of The Great Famine, the inmates are abandoned by the regime and left on their own to survive.
Yan Lianke
Prolific author Yan Lianke was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China
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Carlos Rojas
Carlos Rojas is an author and translator. He also teaches on a variety of topics - ranging from prostitutes and vampires to cities, migration and disease
More about Carlos Rojas Other nominated books by Carlos Rojas
Yan Lianke’s fantastical satire about a culture so obsessed with an ever-expanding lust for power and money that it has forgotten its soul
