It is difficult to know whether Carlos Rojas’ translation of Yan Lianke’s The Four Books is as long as it is because of the size of the original text. Or maybe there’s a tradition in Chinese literature which embraces repetition. Perhaps it’s unavoidable.
For my taste however, The Four Books is about 50% longer than it needs to be.
Having said that, the narrative presented is a harrowing fable about life during China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’, the period between 1958 and 1962 where the Mao and the Communists turned China from an agrarian society into an embryonic industrial one.
Given the nature of Lianke’s narrative, I find myself somewhat surprised that he has won two of China’s most prestigious literary awards. But that’s surely representative of ‘a good thing’. In less enlightened times, urban myth would probably have had him ‘disappeared’ for portraying the period in the way he has.
There’s an air of 1984 about the book, and it’s not a comfortable read – especially during the famine sections towards the end.
Ian Gouge - Writer 