RaveFull StopIf Yan’s memoir owes its existence to family, it is because every blessing in Yan’s life owed its existence to family, as Yan’s unflinching self-examination demonstrates plainly ... arresting ... as a peasant who was able to write himself out of the fields and into international celebrity, Yan poignantly shows that the most effective antidote to death is gratitude.
Yan Lianke, Trans. by Carlos Rojas
RaveFull StopYan’s talents as a dystopian prophet are most evident ... Yan has conjured up something both ghastly and unreal, yet only liminally unreal, something that could possibly be real. This confusion between the potentially true and absolutely false is underscored by Yan’s own presence in the novel, as a character ... The writing and translation are both excellent, which only makes these figures of speech all the more disquieting.
