The Family Plot

A son who wants to kill his father, who wants kill his wife, who wants to kill her only son: the eye-popping new novel from one of the world’s great literary satirists is full of surprises and home truths

Gaotian Town, Central Plains, China. In this small, provincial town lives a family. The son dreams of going to America, while his father obsesses over building a new house in the face of abject poverty. His long-suffering mother worries about her only child’s waywardness. They are also all thinking about killing each other.

In a series of confessions given over just a few days, the family reveals its slow descent into murderous chaos. In Gaotian, the tension between class aspiration and struggle squeezes hard. There’s Mr & Mrs Home Appliances, the wealthiest and most envied family in town; Shampoo Girl, who works at the local beauty parlour and needs to escape whatever the cost; and Boss Veg, a vegetable seller turned successful entrepreneur who, unbeknownst to him, has a hand in the fate of multiple lives.

Set against the turbulent backdrop of social and cultural transformation, we witness a working-class family undone by desperation and desire. In his darkly comic voice, Yan Lianke explores the push and pull of money, modernity, familial strife and the decay of tradition – and the lengths to which people will go as they strive for a better life.