Exceptionally prolific across a range of genres, including the novel, short story, and essay, he has been described as having a preternatural gift for metaphor, but his writing remains exquisitely rooted in the earthiness of the natural world. But it is his persistent sociopolitical commentaries within his mythorealist narratives that have drawn the government’s ire.
søndag 22. januar 2023
Forbidden Writer: An Interview with Author Yan Lianke
The Chinese writer Yan Lianke was born in Song County, Henan province, in 1958. At twenty he joined the army. He graduated from Henan University with a degree in politics and education in 1985 and six years later left the People’s Liberation Army Art Institute with a degree in literature. From his humble beginnings as a propaganda writer, Yan has gone on to become among China’s most controversial writers—one whose work is frequently censored for its focus on the lives of those devastated by Beijing’s policies. “When people are dreamwalking,” he writes in The Day the Sun Died (2015), “they see only the people and things they care about, and it is as if nothing else exists.”
Exceptionally prolific across a range of genres, including the novel, short story, and essay, he has been described as having a preternatural gift for metaphor, but his writing remains exquisitely rooted in the earthiness of the natural world. But it is his persistent sociopolitical commentaries within his mythorealist narratives that have drawn the government’s ire.
Exceptionally prolific across a range of genres, including the novel, short story, and essay, he has been described as having a preternatural gift for metaphor, but his writing remains exquisitely rooted in the earthiness of the natural world. But it is his persistent sociopolitical commentaries within his mythorealist narratives that have drawn the government’s ire.
