Heart Sutra
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The Heart Sutra is the most mysterious scripture in Chinese Buddhism. In Yan Lianke’s new novel, disciples of China’s five main religions—Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism and Islam—gather for a year at the Religious Training Centre of Beijing’s National Politics University. They live together, study together, exercise together in the blazing sun, and get caught up in financial and sexual shenanigans.
Heart Sutra explores the complex relations between humans and gods, between the secular and the divine, and between genders. The youngest Daoist monk and the youngest Buddhist nun fall in love. But as their faith is tested, will they stay committed to the path of a holy life? The choices they make are confronting, because nothing less than the fate of the gods is at stake.
Illustrated with beautiful woodcuts, animated by an incisive sense of humour, and inhabited by an unforgettable cast of mortals and deities, Heart Sutra is a stunning addition to Yan Lianke’s oeuvre, which highlights the best and worst in humankind.
Yan Lianke is the author of the memoir Three Brothers and numerous novels and novellas, including Hard Like Water, The Day the Sun Died, The Explosion Chronicles, The Four Books, Lenin’s Kisses, Serve the People!, Dream of Ding Village, and The Years, Months, Days. He was awarded the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature and the Franz Kafka Prize, among many accolades. He was twice a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, and he has been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Man Asian Literary Prize, and the Prix Femina Étranger. He has also received two of China’s most prestigious literary honors, the Lu Xun Prize and the Lao She Award.
Carlos Rojas has translated seven books by Yan Lianke.
‘One of those rare geniuses who finds in the peculiar absurdities of his own culture the absurdities that infect all cultures.’ Washington Post
‘Yan Lianke speaks to the agitation and absurdity of human existence, and the unquenchable need to believe in a cause greater than ourselves.’ Jessie Au, author of Cold Enough for Snow
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This intriguing satire from Yan (Hard Like Water) unfolds during a conference involving members of China's five major religions: Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam. Yahui, a young Buddhist jade nun, attends a one-year program at a government-sponsored religious training center in Beijing, where the director, Gong, hopes to write a book on the relationships and contradictions among the various belief systems. Gong arranges tug-of-war competitions between groups and works with a figure known as Nameless to blackmail donors to raise money for the training center. Yahui is on campus to assist her mentor, Jueyu, but after Jueyu suffers a stroke while witnessing a tug-of-war match, Yahui takes her place. Soon, she meets Daoist master Gu Mingzheng, who is searching for his birth father, and the duo form a bond that turns romantic. After Yahui's convent collapses, she sets her sights on buying an apartment in the city, and she and Mingzheng, whose parental search is one of perpetual disappointment, consider starting a secular life together. While Yan's similes are dubious and awkwardly translated ("the sky was as dark as though it were covered in a black cloth"), his barbs against organized religion frequently hit their targets (a Christian claims the Communist Party as one of Jesus's disciples). Despite the rough spots, there is plenty to admire.
