Awards

• Long-listed for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2017 (UK)
• Long-listed for The International Man Booker Prize 2017 (UK)

Overview

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2017 With the Yi River on one side and the Balou Mountains on the other, the village of Explosion was founded a thousand years ago by refugees fleeing a volcanic eruption. But in the post-Mao era, the name takes on a new significance as the rural community grows explosively from a small village to a town to a city to a vast megalopolis. Behind this rapid expansion are three rival clans linked together by a web of ambition, madness and greed. Together they transform their hometown into a Babylon of modern times -- an unrivalled urban superpower built on lies, sex and thievery. 'One of the masters of modern Chinese literature' Jung Chang

Full Product Details

9781784701925

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Reviews

As much a parody of communist rule in China as a devastating critique of capitalist excess, power, greed and self-destruction, Yan's novel is nothing short of a masterpiece -- Claire Kohda Hazelton * Guardian * Welcome to 'mythorealism' and Yan Lianke's extraordinary novel. The Explosion Chronicles wields a different take on reality to present a provocatively illuminating and perceptive insight into contemporary China... The sweeping mythic style and exaggerated, cartoon-like effects are exhilarating, and for all that they might be hideously satirical... the reality of life in China and the self-entitlement of senior officials, is sharply conveyed... The rapid expansion of the Chinese economy and the country's growing assertiveness is one of the most important phenomena of our time: you couldn't call The Explosion Chronicles a definitive guide, but it will certainly help you understand it better -- David Mills * The Sunday Times * A rip-roaring Swiftian satire from a contemporary Chinese master... Yan Lianke, one of China's most forthright and versatile novelists, enlists extravagant comedy and far-fetched fable to propel his critique of a society where power and money have colluded to steal people's souls * The Economist * In the Man Booker International Prize-longlisted The Explosion Chronicles, the latest of Yan Lianke's traumatic, inexhaustible satires of China over the past six decades, the fictional village of Explosion undergoes a similar whirlwind expansion in the post-Mao era. The resulting novel is a hyper-real tour de force, a blistering condemnation of political corruption and excess masquerading as absurdist saga -- Catherine Taylor * Financial Times * An epic tale of miracles, madness, greed and corruption set against the backdrop of runaway urbanization... Even the most majestic of sights in this novel are distractions designed to mask the pervasive moral rot that lies just beneath the surface -- Jeffrey Wasserstrom * Times Literary Supplement *

Charting the transformation of a rural village into a 21st- century megalopolis, it is a boisterously inventive novel that conveys the everyday reality of modern China -- David Mills * Sunday Times Books of the Year * As much a parody of communist rule in China as a devastating critique of capitalist excess, power, greed and self-destruction, Yan's novel is nothing short of a masterpiece -- Claire Kohda Hazelton * Observer * Extraordinary... A provocatively illuminating and perceptive insight into contemporary China -- David Mills * The Sunday Times * A hyper-real tour de force, a blistering condemnation of political corruption and excess masquerading as absurdist saga -- Catherine Taylor * Financial Times * A rip-roaring Swiftian satire from a contemporary Chinese master... Yan Lianke, one of China's most forthright and versatile novelists, enlists extravagant comedy and far-fetched fable to propel his critique of a society where power and money have colluded to steal people's souls * The Economist *

Charting the transformation of a rural village into a 21st- century megalopolis, it is a boisterously inventive novel that conveys the everyday reality of modern China -- David Mills * Sunday Times Books of the Year * As much a parody of communist rule in China as a devastating critique of capitalist excess, power, greed and self-destruction, Yan's novel is nothing short of a masterpiece -- Claire Kohda Hazelton * Guardian * Welcome to 'mythorealism' and Yan Lianke's extraordinary novel. The Explosion Chronicles wields a different take on reality to present a provocatively illuminating and perceptive insight into contemporary China... The sweeping mythic style and exaggerated, cartoon-like effects are exhilarating, and for all that they might be hideously satirical... the reality of life in China and the self-entitlement of senior officials, is sharply conveyed... The rapid expansion of the Chinese economy and the country's growing assertiveness is one of the most important phenomena of our time: you couldn't call The Explosion Chronicles a definitive guide, but it will certainly help you understand it better -- David Mills * The Sunday Times * A rip-roaring Swiftian satire from a contemporary Chinese master... Yan Lianke, one of China's most forthright and versatile novelists, enlists extravagant comedy and far-fetched fable to propel his critique of a society where power and money have colluded to steal people's souls * The Economist * In the Man Booker International Prize-longlisted The Explosion Chronicles, the latest of Yan Lianke's traumatic, inexhaustible satires of China over the past six decades, the fictional village of Explosion undergoes a similar whirlwind expansion in the post-Mao era. The resulting novel is a hyper-real tour de force, a blistering condemnation of political corruption and excess masquerading as absurdist saga -- Catherine Taylor * Financial Times *

Author Information

Yan Lianke was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China. He is the author of numerous novels and short-story collections, including Serve the People!, Dream of Ding Village, Lenin's Kisses, The Four Books, The Explosion Chronicles, The Day the Sun Died and Hard Like Water. He has been awarded the Hua Zhong World Chinese Literature Prize, the Lao She Literary Award, the Dream of the Red Chamber Award and the Franz Kafka Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the International Man Booker Prize, the Principe de Asturias Prize for Letters, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the FT/Oppenheimer Fund Emerging Voices Award and the prix Femina Étranger. The Day the Sun Died won the Dream of the Red Chamber Award for the World's Most Distinguished Novel in Chinese. He lives and writes in Beijing.

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