Sound and Silence
My Experience with China and Literature
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Yan Lianke is a world-renowned author of novels, short stories, and essays whose provocative and nuanced writing explores the reality of everyday life in contemporary China. In Sound and Silence, Yan compares his literary project to a blind man carrying a flashlight whose role is to help others perceive the darkness that surrounds them. Often described as China’s most censored author, Yan reflects candidly on literary censorship in contemporary China. He outlines the Chinese state’s project of national amnesia that suppresses memories of past crises and social traumas. Although being banned in China is often a selling point in foreign markets, Yan argues that there is no requisite correlation between censorship and literary quality. Among other topics, Yan also examines the impact of American literature on Chinese literature in the 1980s and 1990s. Encapsulating his perspectives on life, writing, and literary history, Sound and Silence includes an introduction by translator Carlos Rojas and an afterword by Yan.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This pensive if homogenous compendium by novelist Yan (Heart Sutra) brings together lectures he delivered at universities across the U.S. in 2014 opining on literature and the chilling effects of state censorship on art. Yan suggests that literature's ability to "help us find the delicate light, beauty, warmth, and love that lie hidden in the darkness" is well suited to capturing the contrasts of contemporary China, in which the benefits of rapid economic development have accrued alongside state oppression of civilians. Frequently introduced at speaking engagements as "China's most controversial and most censored author," Yan devotes several selections to exploring the impact of China's censors, pondering whether the sustained suppression of ideas produces blind spots authors might not even be aware they have. The pieces offer revealing insight into Yan's views on writing, but the selections frequently return to the same ideas and come to feel repetitive. For instance, multiple lectures discuss the imperative for writers to maintain artistic integrity even when it pits them against state officials, and other pieces repeat the metaphor of two windows, one open and the other shut, to illustrate the tension between China's increasingly globalized economy and the state's stronghold over "society and the people." This will primarily interest Yan's most devoted fans.
