We must confront our dark past of the Cultural Revolution to avoid repeating it, says Chinese novelist Yan Lianke
Author of The Four Books, one of the few novels about the Great Famine of the 50s and 60s and shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for Literature, believes that the more China can reflect critically on its past, the more it will progress for the better
China must confront its dark past to avoid repeating history, novelist Yan Lianke has said ahead of the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution.
On April 14, Yan’s 2011 novel The Four Books was named one of six finalists for this year’s Man Booker International Prize for fiction, his second nomination since he was named a finalist with Lenin’s Kisses in 2013.
Chinese author Yan Lianke shortlisted for International Man Booker prize for The Four Books
The book, one of the few Chinese novels to tackle the Great Famine of the 1950s and 1960s leading up to the Cultural Revolution, was rejected by 20 publishers for its political content and banned in the mainland China. This did not stop the Man Booker judges naming Yan “one of China’s boldest living writers”.
There is never enough discussion about the Cultural Revolution
Yan has repeatedly slipped through the cracks of China’s increasingly tight censorship, churning out one book after another. Three of them – Serve the People!, As Hard As Water and the critically-acclaimed The Four Books – explore one of the modern China’s most sensitive topics, the Cultural Revolution.
“There is never enough discussion about the Cultural Revolution,” Yan said recently in Hong Kong, where is a guest lecturer of Chinese literature for six months at the city’s University of Science and Technology.
“The more we talk about it and the more critical are our reflections on it, the more China will progress for the better. But China will go backwards if we keep avoiding the subject.”