A review by jade_flynn
The Four Books by Yan Lianke

3.0

If you pick this up in a bookshop based solely on the blurb you aren't going understand the novel, in my opinion you need at least a basic understanding of Mao's China, particularly The Great Famine. If you know nothing you aren't going to appreciate The Four Books as more than a piece of fiction and it deserves to be understood in relation to the history it deals with.