Yan Lianke is one of the most important, prolific, and controversial writers in contemporary China.
At the forefront of the mythorealist Chinese avant-garde and using absurdist humor and grotesque satire, Yans works have caught much critical attention not only in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan but also around the world. His critiques of modern China under both Mao-era socialism and contemporary capitalism draw on a deep knowledge of history, folklore, and spirituality.
This companion presents a collection of critical essays by leading scholars of Yan Lianke from around the world, organized into some of the key themes of his work: Mythorealism; Absurdity and Spirituality; and History and Gender, as well as the challenges of translating his work into English and other languages. With an essay written by Yan Lianke himself, this is a vital and authoritative resource for students and scholars looking to understand Yans works from both his own perspective and those of leading critics.
Yan Lianke is one of the most important, prolific, and controversial writers in contemporary China. This companion presents a collection of critical essays by leading scholars from around the world, organised into some of the key themes of his work: Mythorealism; Absurdity; and History, as well as the challenges to translating his work.
Part I: Mythorealism & Censorship
1. Yan Liankes Mythorealist
Representation of the Country and the City
2. Building Chinese Reality with
Language and Metaphor: From Socialist Realism to Mythorealism
3.
Mythorealism, the Absurd, and Existential Despair in Yan Liankes Memoir and
Fiction: Confronting the Fate of Sisyphus in Modern Chinas Historical
Traumas
4. Magical Realism, Mythorealism and the Re-presentation of History
in the Works of Yan Lianke
5. Mythorealism or Pararealism? Yan Liankes Short
Fiction as a Key to Enter the Authors Representational World
6. Censure and
Censorship: Prohibition and Presence of Yan Liankes Writings in China Part
II: Absurdity & Spirituality
7. The Absurd as Method: The Chinese Absurdist
Hero, Enchanted Power, and the Alienated Poor in Yan Liankes Military
Literature
8. Yan Lianke and Italo Calvino on the Absurdity of Urban Life
9.
"Inverse Theology" in Yan Liankes Four Books and Franz Kafkas The Trial
10.
Elements of Modernism and the Grotesque in Yan Liankes Early Fiction
11.
Representing the Intellectuals in Yan Liankes Recent Writing: An Exile of
the Soul
12. The Dream, the Disease, and the Disaster: On Yan Liankes Dream
of Ding Village
13. Yan Liankes Novel Heart Sutra: The Kiss of the Rock and
the Egg
14. The Redemption of the Peach Blossom Spring: An Examination of the
Human Condition in Yan Liankes Zhongyuan Part III: History & Gender
15.
Creating a Literary Space to Debate the Mao Era: The Fictionalization of the
Great Leap Forward in Yan Liankes Four Books
16. Disability, Revolution, and
Historiography: Grandma Maozhi in Lenins Kisses
17. Corrective Catachresis:
Capitalist Mystification Derailed in The Explosion Chronicles and "The Story
of Fertile Town"
18. Reconstructing the Self through Herstory: On Yan
Liankes Tamen (Shes)
19. Female Labor, the Third Sex, and Excrescence in Yan
Liankes Nonfiction
20. A Geocritical Study of Yan Liankes Balou Mountain
Stories: The Utopian Cognitive Mapping in Post-1949 China
21. An Ecocritical
Approach to Yan Liankes Literary Works
22. Paratextual Encounters in Yan
Liankes Fictional Worlds: Reading between the Lines Part IV: Translation &
Reception
23. Ideological Patterns in the Critical Reception of Yan Lianke: A
Comparative Approach
24. The Challenge of Translating Yan Liankes Literary
Creation
25. Yan Lianke in Basque: Notes on Translating Sensory Images
26.
The Translation and Reception of Yan Lianke in France
27. The Treacherous
"News That Stays News": The Four Books in Czech Translation
28. Translating
the Chinese Cultural Other: Yan Liankes Shouhuo in English Translation
29.
The Translation and Reception of Yan Lianke in Japan
30. The Translation and
Reception of Yan Liankes Fiction in Vietnam
31. The Reception and
Significance of Yan Liankes Works in Taiwan
32. The Reception of Yan Lianke
in Hong Kong
Riccardo Moratto is Full Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Chinese Translation and Interpreting at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation (GIIT), Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), and Honorary Guest Professor at Nanjing Agricultural University. Prof. Moratto is a Chartered Linguist and Fellow Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIoL), Visiting Scholar at Shandong University, Honorary Research Fellow at the Center for Translation Studies of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and Expert Member of the Translators Association of China (TAC). Prof. Moratto is also an international conference interpreter and a renowned literary translator. He has published extensively in the fields of translation and interpreting studies and Chinese literature in translation.
Howard Yuen Fung Choy, Associate Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, received his PhD in comparative literature from the University of Colorado. Chief editor of the Brill series Hong Kong Culture and Literature and African and Asian Anthropocene: Studies in the Environmental Humanities, co-editor of Liu Zaifu: Selected Critical Essays (2021), editor of Discourses of Disease: Writing Illness, the Mind and Body in Modern China (2016), the author of Remapping the Past: Fictions of History in Dengs China, 19791997 (2008), and the assistant author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Confucianism (2005), he has also published articles and translations in major scholarly journals, including positions, American Journal of Chinese Studies, and Asian Theatre Journal.
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