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A review by textpublishing
The Years, Months, Days by Yan Lianke
5.0
‘When times are bearable, or even good, there are a lot of things that we dismiss, because even though they can be sensed and felt, they can hardly be measured or put into sentences. Yan Lianke seems to suggest that we have to try anyways…What Yan Lianke does is offering the idea that alternatives exist, even in situations that render us seemingly incapable of taking action.’
Full Stop
‘The predicament it depicts is so harrowing, yet its treatment so stark and stately with a luminous beauty that makes it unearthly, that it retains a tragicomic quality that affirms the nature of art as an intimation of truth...What a hopeful book Yan Lianke has made out of the very essence of hopelessness. What a cry for life and human dignity.’
Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald
‘A pair of shape-shifting novellas…finds the Chinese master at the top of his game…Witty, sardonic, and full of rich irony…Lianke’s pair of works, while set in rural China, offer a golden opportunity to reflect on our own fraught times. His satirical eye and generous heart are finely rendered in Carlos Rojas’ superb translation. These are tales to savour.’
Toronto Star
‘Emotionally loaded stories…It’s hard not to be moved by the running theme of self-sacrifice…[The Years, Months, Days] pays homage to the fated generation upon whose flesh and bones modern China was built.’
Wall Street Journal
‘Yan Lianke creates imaginary wounds in real blood…His books read like the brutal folklore history couldn’t bear to remember, and his characters feel stranded, forgotten by time…like Beckett’s most memorable characters…Desolation has rarely seemed so sensual, so insistently alive…Yan’s vulgarity is the flip side of his sensuality, and recalls Upton Sinclair’s line about aiming for his readers’ hearts and hitting them in the stomach.’
New York Times Book Review
‘A moving fable about the love between an old man and his blind dog trying to survive.’
Mindfood
‘Yan Lianke is one of the best contemporary Chinese writers.’
Independent
‘A master of imaginative satire. His work is animated by an affectionate loyalty to his peasant origins in the poverty-stricken province of Henan, and fierce anger over the political abuses of the regime.’
Guardian
‘One of China’s eminent and most controversial novelists and satirists.’
Chicago Tribune
‘Yan Lianke well deserves to be in the Pantheon of great writers. He has no equal at attacking societal issues or the great Maoist myths in order to turn them into novels so breathtakingly powerful, shot through with black, often desperate, humor.’
Le Monde Diplomatique
Full Stop
‘The predicament it depicts is so harrowing, yet its treatment so stark and stately with a luminous beauty that makes it unearthly, that it retains a tragicomic quality that affirms the nature of art as an intimation of truth...What a hopeful book Yan Lianke has made out of the very essence of hopelessness. What a cry for life and human dignity.’
Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald
‘A pair of shape-shifting novellas…finds the Chinese master at the top of his game…Witty, sardonic, and full of rich irony…Lianke’s pair of works, while set in rural China, offer a golden opportunity to reflect on our own fraught times. His satirical eye and generous heart are finely rendered in Carlos Rojas’ superb translation. These are tales to savour.’
Toronto Star
‘Emotionally loaded stories…It’s hard not to be moved by the running theme of self-sacrifice…[The Years, Months, Days] pays homage to the fated generation upon whose flesh and bones modern China was built.’
Wall Street Journal
‘Yan Lianke creates imaginary wounds in real blood…His books read like the brutal folklore history couldn’t bear to remember, and his characters feel stranded, forgotten by time…like Beckett’s most memorable characters…Desolation has rarely seemed so sensual, so insistently alive…Yan’s vulgarity is the flip side of his sensuality, and recalls Upton Sinclair’s line about aiming for his readers’ hearts and hitting them in the stomach.’
New York Times Book Review
‘A moving fable about the love between an old man and his blind dog trying to survive.’
Mindfood
‘Yan Lianke is one of the best contemporary Chinese writers.’
Independent
‘A master of imaginative satire. His work is animated by an affectionate loyalty to his peasant origins in the poverty-stricken province of Henan, and fierce anger over the political abuses of the regime.’
Guardian
‘One of China’s eminent and most controversial novelists and satirists.’
Chicago Tribune
‘Yan Lianke well deserves to be in the Pantheon of great writers. He has no equal at attacking societal issues or the great Maoist myths in order to turn them into novels so breathtakingly powerful, shot through with black, often desperate, humor.’
Le Monde Diplomatique