Member Loginmenu
The Explosion Chronicles

The Explosion Chronicles

Yan Lianke

  • awardLonglisted, PEN Translation Prize, United States, 2017
  • awardLonglisted, Man Booker Prize, United Kingdom, 2017
  • Translated by Carlos Rojas

    The village of Explosion was founded more than a millennium ago by refugees fleeing a volcanic eruption. But in the post-Mao era the name takes on a new significance as the community grows explosively. Three major families—linked by a complex web of loyalty, betrayal, desire and ambition—are the driving force behind their hometown’s transformation into an urban superpower.

    Brimming with intelligence and wit, The Explosion Chronicles considers the high stakes of passion and power, the consequences of corruption and greed, the polarising dynamics of love and hate between families, and the seemingly unstoppable excesses of capitalism—it is a smart, flamboyant and poetic tale of ambition, lies and vice from China’s master satirist.

    Read an extract published at Lithub.

    REVIEWS

    Daily Mail UK, ‘100 sizzling summer reads’, Jul 18

    Yan Lianke
    About the Author

    Yan Lianke is the author of the memoir Three Brothers and numerous novels and novellas, including Hard Like Water, The Day the Sun Died, The Explosion Chronicles, The Four Books, Lenin’s Kisses, Serve the People!, Dream of Ding Village, and The Years, Months, Days. He was awarded the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature and the Franz Kafka Prize,...

    Read Moreright
    Extent:
    480pp
    Format:
    Paperback
    Text publication date:
    17 October 2016
    ISBN:
    9781925240849
    AU Price:
    $29.99
    NZ Price:
    $37.00
    starstarstarstarstar
    starstarstarstarstar
    Loading Rating
    Praise for Yan Lianke
    andThe Explosion Chronicles

    ‘A rip-roaring Swiftian satire from a contemporary Chinese master… .Yan Lianke, one of China’s most forthright and versatile novelists, enlists extravagant comedy and far-fetched fable to propel his critique of a society where ‘power and money have colluded to steal people’s souls.’… The reader slips into a literary China of poetry and mystery that flourished long before the boom.’

    ‘[The Explosion Chronicles] has the absurdist feel of an Ionesco or Dürrenmatt piece, though without any of the heavy-handed obviousness. Indeed, his satire is careful and crafty…it can be read as a kind of Swiftian satire…Brilliant.’

    ‘Just one of the most wonderful novels I’ve read…He’s [Lianke] known for his satirical writing but if this novels’s anything to go by, there’s an equally impassioned empathy which just exudes from his writing’

    ‘This darkly absurd history trucks freely with the fantastic…but many of the more brazen events are taken straight from the news…Yan’s burlesque of a nation driven insane by money is equally a satire of some of the excesses of the Chinese Revolution’

    ‘A rip-roaring Swiftian satire from a contemporary Chinese master…Yan Lianke, one of China’s most forthright and versatile novelists, enlists extravagant comedy and far-fetched fable to propel his critique of a society where ‘power and money have colluded to steal people’s souls’…The reader slips into a literary China of poetry and mystery that flourished long before the boom.’

    ‘A satire of ambition.’

    ‘An epic page-turner…a multi-layered marvel…combining unflinching observation [and] stinging satire…Yan’s mesmerizing ability to pull readers into this raw, subversive, not completely fictional world will continue to build his international audiences.’

    ‘[Yan’s] fiction has lampooned some of the darkest moments in Chinese history…In this latest work, however, Yan shifts his irreverent gaze from the past to the present and toward projections of the future, taking stock of China’s vertiginous economic rise and the astonishing dissolution of its collective social conscience…The formal inventiveness of The Explosion Chronicles is impressive and its fictional universe vividly drawn…I can think of few better novelists than Yan, with his superlative gifts for storytelling and penetrating eye for truth.’

    Other editions ofThe Explosion Chronicles
    • The Explosion Chronicles
      ebook
      ISBN: 9781922253484
      17 October 2016
      Buy ebook