Sep 1, 2014

THE FOUR BOOKS - Yan Lianke

This is a courageous book from one of China’s most important writers.

Set in Zone 99 of a Labour Camp during China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’, the book follows a group of imprisoned intellectuals undergoing re-education. Monitoring this opressive regime is a preadolescent boy known as the Child.

Faced with harvesting impossible quotas of wheat, and encouraged to inform on the obedience of others, the inmates are rewarded with paper rosettes in the form of small red blossoms, medium red blossoms and pentagonal stars.

The design centres around the motif of four. This could suggest the four inmates – musician, author, scholar and theologian – or how the book divides into four narratives, echoing the four texts of Confucianism and the four Gospels of the New Testament. It also references the seemingly innocent and playful paper blossoms and how they conceal a darker and more disturbing story.

The Four Books is published by Chatto and Windus in March 2015.

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