The Routledge companion to Yan Lianke / edited by Riccardo Moratto and Howard Yuen Fung Choy.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I: Mythorealism & Censorship -- Yan Lianke's Mythorealist Representation of the Country and the City -- Building Chinese Reality with Language and Metaphor: From Socialist Realism to Mythorealism -- Mythorealism, the Absurd, and Existential Despair in Yan Lianke's Memoir and Fiction: Confronting the Fate of Sisyphus in Modern China's Historical Traumas -- Magical Realism, Mythorealism and the Re-presentation of History in the Works of Yan Lianke -- Mythorealism or Pararealism? Yan Lianke's Short Fiction as a Key to Enter the Author's Representational World -- Censure and Censorship: Prohibition and Presence of Yan Lianke's Writings in China -- Part II: Absurdity & Spirituality -- The Absurd as Method: The Chinese Absurdist Hero, Enchanted Power, and the Alienated Poor in Yan Lianke's Military Literature -- Yan Lianke and Italo Calvino on the Absurdity of Urban Life -- "Inverse Theology" in Yan Lianke's Four Books and Franz Kafka's The Trial -- Elements of Modernism and the Grotesque in Yan Lianke's Early Fiction -- Representing the Intellectuals in Yan Lianke's Recent Writing: An Exile of the Soul -- The Dream, the Disease, and the Disaster: On Yan Lianke's Dream of Ding Village -- Yan Lianke's Novel Heart Sutra: The Kiss of the Rock and the Egg -- The Redemption of the Peach Blossom Spring: An Examination of the Human Condition in Yan Lianke's Zhongyuan -- Part III: History & Gender -- Creating a Literary Space to Debate the Mao Era: The Fictionalization of the Great Leap Forward in Yan Lianke's Four Books -- Disability, Revolution, and Historiography: Grandma Maozhi in Lenin's Kisses -- Corrective Catachresis: Capitalist Mystification Derailed in The Explosion Chronicles and "The Story of Fertile Town" -- Reconstructing the Self through Herstory: On Yan Lianke's Tamen (Shes) -- Female Labor, the Third Sex, and Excrescence in Yan Lianke's Nonfiction Tamen -- A Geocritical Study of Yan Lianke's Balou Mountain Stories: The Utopian Cognitive Mapping in Post-1949 China -- An Ecocritical Approach to Yan Lianke's Literary Works -- Paratextual Encounters in Yan Lianke's Fictional Worlds: Reading between the Lines -- Part IV: Translation & Reception -- Ideological Patterns in the Critical Reception of Yan Lianke: A Comparative Approach -- The Challenge of Translating Yan Lianke's Literary Creation -- Yan Lianke in Basque: Notes on Translating Sensory Images -- The Translation and Reception of Yan Lianke in France -- The Treacherous "News That Stays News": The Four Books in Czech Translation -- Translating the Chinese Cultural Other: Yan Lianke's Shouhuo in English Translation -- The Translation and Reception of Yan Lianke in Japan -- The Translation and Reception of Yan Lianke's Fiction in Vietnam -- The Reception and Significance of Yan Lianke's Works in Taiwan -- The Reception of Yan Lianke in Hong Kong -- Complete Chinese Bibliography of Yan Lianke in Chronological Order.

"Yan Lianke is one of the most important, prolific, and controversial writers in contemporary China. At the forefront of the "mythorealist" Chinese avant-garde and using absurdist humour and grotesque satire, Yan's works have caught much critical attention not only in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but also around the world. His critiques of modern China under both Mao-era socialism and contemporary capitalism draw on a deep knowledge of history, folklore and spirituality. This companion presents a collection of critical essays by leading scholars of Yan Lianke from around the world, organised into some of the key themes of his work: Mythorealism; Absurdity & Spirituality; and History & Gender, as well as the challenges of translating his work into English and other languages. With an Introduction by Yan Lianke himself, this is a vital and authoritative resource for students and scholars looking to understand Yan's works from both his own perspective, and those of leading critics"--