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Lenin's Kisses

byYan Lianke, Carlos Rojas (Translator)
A FINALIST FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE

Deep within the Balou mountains lies a small rural town populated by disabled people. Blind, deaf and disfigured, the 197 citizens of the Village of Liven have until now enjoyed a peaceful, mutually supportive life out of sight and mind of the government. But when an unseasonal snowstorm wipes out that year’s crops, a county official dreams up a scheme that will raise money for the district and boost his career.

He convinces the villagers to set up a travelling freak-show, to include Blind Tonghua’s Acute Listening Act and Deafman Ma’s Firecrackers-on-the-Ear. With the money, he intends to buy Lenin’s embalmed corpse from an ailing Russia and install it in a splendid mausoleum in the mountains to attract tourism to this sleepy district. However, as we all know, even the best intentions can go awry.

Yan Lianke is one of China’s most interesting writers and a master of imaginative satire

Isabel Hilton, Guardian

About Yan Lianke

Yan Lianke is the author of works including Dream of Ding Village, The Day the Sun Died, The Four Books, Three Brothers and Hard Like Water. He has been awarded the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Royal Society of Literature International Writer Lifetime Award, and was twice a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize. He has received two of China’s most prestigious literary honors, the Lu Xun Prize and the Lao She Award. He was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China.
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Details
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • ISBN: 9780099569480
  • Length: 512 pages
  • Dimensions: 199mm x 31mm x 132mm
  • Weight: 351g
  • Price: £18.99
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