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Canadian literary critic Laifong Leung explores how author Yan Lianke successfully draws upon his own harsh life experiences and the ordeals of others to speak about the suffering of the peasantry with an insider's authority. Leung reveals how through his often satiric and allegorical style and his distinctive combination of fantasy, folklore, and the grotesque, Yan Lianke has developed his own unique, socially engaged literature of conscience.
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Exuberant, compassionate, and innovative, Yan Lianke .... is among the most prolific, successful, and controversial writers of China today. Since 1979 he has published fourteen volumes of collected stories and novellas, thirteen novels, and six essay collections, and he has won more than twenty prizes, including the prestigious Laoshe Literary Award ... for his novella Huangjin dong ... (Golden Cave) and the Lu Xun Literary Prize ...twice, once for the novella Nian yue ri .. (Year, Month, Day), and also for the novel Shouhuo ... (Happy). All three are outstanding works dealing with the desire and suffering of the peasantry. Yan Lianke's courage in venturing into forbidden zones-as shown in the controversial novella Wei renmin fuwu .... (Serve the People!), which deals with the illicit relationship between a high-ranking military officer's wife and her soldierservant- also added to his fame. Due to the novella's sensitive nature, it was banned by an unprecedented order from the Central Propaganda Department after the first printing. Yan Lianke is also deeply concerned about the victims of AIDS in his home province of Henan; his observations from the several months he spent in the epidemic zone resulted in his novel Dingzhuang meng ... (Dream of Ding Village), which, like Serve the People!, was banned immediately after it was published. In 2007 Yan Lianke left his position in the army and obtained a transfer to the Beijing Writers' Association. He aroused controversy again in the spring of 2008 when he published his satirical novel Feng ya song ... (Elegy and Acadame), which exposed academic corruption through the eyes of a scholar who was of peasant origin. Yan Lianke's writing reveals human suffering through his portrayals of the peasants who work in the fields, who join the army, and who make their way to the city. He is...