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Lenin's Kisses

Lenin's Kisses

by Carlos Rojas (Translator), Carlos Rojas (Translator), Yan Lianke (Author)

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    Paperback 2013

    $3.36

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    Paperback 2013

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Synopsis

A FINALIST FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE Deep within the Balou mountains lies a small rural town populated by disabled people. Blind, deaf and disfigured, the 197 citizens of the Village of Liven have until now enjoyed a peaceful, mutually supportive life out of sight and mind of the government. But when an unseasonal snowstorm wipes out that year's crops, a county official dreams up a scheme that will raise money for the district and boost his career. He convinces the villagers to set up a travelling freak-show, to include Blind Tonghua's Acute Listening Act and Deafman Ma's Firecrackers-on-the-Ear. With the money, he intends to buy Lenin's embalmed corpse from an ailing Russia and install it in a splendid mausoleum in the mountains to attract tourism to this sleepy district. However, as we all know, even the best intentions can go awry.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 512
 Publisher: Vintage
Published: 03 Oct 2013
ISBN 10: 0099569485
ISBN 13: 9780099569480
Book Overview: 'One of China's greatest living authors and fiercest satirists' (Guardian) Winner of the 2014 Franz Kafka Prize

Media Reviews
Yan Lianke is one of China's most interesting writers and a master of imaginative satire -- Isabel Hilton * Guardian *
Lenin's Kisses is a grand comic novel, wild in spirit and inventive in technique. It's a rhapsody that blends the imaginary with the real, raves about the absurd and the truthful, inspires both laughter and tears... The publication of this magnificent work in English should be an occasion for celebration. * Ha Jin, author of Waiting *
The award-winning novelist Yan Lianke is one of China's most interesting writers and a master of imaginative satire -- Isabel Hilton * Guardian *
Yan Lianke movingly chronicles the price that Communist China's rush to get rich has exacted from its vulnerable majority * Spectator *
A hugely ambitious political fable ... a great ripping yarn -- Xiaolu Guo * Independent *
Yan's postmodern cartoon of the Communist dream caving to run-amok capitalism is fiendishly clever * New York Times Book Review *
Yan, one of China's most successful writers, is still gaining attention abroad, but this story of a village that decides to buy Lenin's corpse is Yan at the peak of his absurdist powers. He writes in the spirit of the dissident writer Vladimir Voinovich, who observed that reality and satire are the same -- Evan Osnos * New Yorker, Best Books of 2012 *
I read Lenin's Kisses, a fierce, funny, painful and playful novel by a great Chinese writer; Yan Lianke. It is much more than just a poignant, daring political parody: it is also a subtle study of evil and stupidity, misery and compassion -- Amos Oz, New York Times
This is a tale of modern China with all its wonders, marvels and absurdities and ironies roped together, making it a must-read. It's little wonder that the author has won both China's equivalences of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. * Da Chen, author of My Last Empress *
Lenin's Kisses wickedly satirizes a sycophantic society where money and power are indiscriminately worshiped ... As the traveling circus gains fans across the country, it becomes clear that the officials behind the scenes, not the performers, are the true freaks -- Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore * Wall Street Journal *
Sprawling, sometimes goofy, always seditious novel of modern life in the remotest corner of China . . . Set Rabelais down in the mountains of, say, Xinjiang, mix in some Gunter Grass, Thomas Pynchon and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and you're in the approximate territory of Lianke's latest exercise in epatering the powers that be . . . A satirical masterpiece * Kirkus Reviews *
The novel's depth lies in its ability to express an unbearable sorrow, even while constantly making the reader laugh out loud ... a truly miraculous novel * Ming Pao Weekly (Hong Kong) *
Yan Lianke weaves a passionate satire of today's China, a marvellous circus where the one eyed-man is king . . . Brutal. And wickedly funny * L'Express *
Lenin's Kisses shines with both the lyrical flourishes of magical realism and the keenly sharpened knives of great satire. The reader joins the inhabitants of the village of Liven as they confront the great upheavals of 20th Century Chinese history armed with both whimsy and their obsessive determination to prevail. This tale is at once breathtaking and seriously funny. Anyone who wishes to understand the psychic world-view of the modern People's Republic of China must read this fine novel. * Vincent Lam, author of The Headmaster's Wager *
With its distinctive language, structure and narrative approach, Lenin's Kisses presents a distictive version of 'rural china' and 'revolutionary China', even while establishing a new literary 'native China' * Contemporary Literature Commentary *
Author Bio
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 and The Explosion Chronicles. 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 an array of prizes including 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 Etranger. 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.