Yan Lianke is the farmer’s son, cultural revolutionary and former soldier in the People’s Liberation Army, who went on to become an author and professor of literature in Beijing. He has been tipped for the Nobel Prize on multiple occasions.

He is one of the most acclaimed Chinese authors today having received numerous Chinese awards, the prestigious Kafka Prize and been nominated for the Booker Prize on multiple occasions. Lianke is the author of over fifty books, including seventeen novels. Seven have been translated to Swedish and several are banned in China- either officially or unofficially.

After the publication of a number of novels, Lianke was informed by a political leader that he was not welcome in his home province anymore- a devastating blow for Lianke. 

It is to this province he returns in the autobiographical novel Three Brothers: Memories of my Family (2020), which was recently published in Swedish. With this novel, Lianke, who has criticized the capitalism and egoism of contemporary China, leaves behind a loving memory of the China of the sixties and seventies. It is a tribute to his impoverished family and province.

He depicts a life reminiscent of our own great proletarian writers Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, who made their living through manual labour during the day and wrote late into the night.

Over the past few years, Lianke’s writing has become more overtly critical of society and he has called state financed Chinese literature “fabricated realism”, claiming it portrays a false, romanticized version of reality.

In works such as The Explosion Chronicles (2016), The Four Books (2011) and Lenin’s Kisses (2004),  Lianke pens dark satires, portraying China during and after Mao as a grotesque house of mirrors. Dreams of Ding (2006) tells the true story of a scandal involving blood donations which resulted in widespread HIV infections in the region.  The above mentioned of Yan Lianke’s work has been translated into Swedish by Anna Gustafsson Chen, which in itself is an enormous cultural contribution. Chen has praised Dreams of Ding as an “axe to the heart”. Here she will be in conversation with Yan Lianke.

In cooperation with Swedish PEN.

Languages: Chinese, Swedish
Thursday 24 March 19.00
Akademibokhandeln Uppsala