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Published Dec 2018
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Set over the course of one increasingly bizarre night, The Day the Sun Died is a propulsive, darkly sinister tale set against the national optimism of the Chinese dream.
Yan Lianke has secured his place as contemporary China's most essential and daring novelist, "with his superlative gifts for storytelling and penetrating eye for truth" (New York Times Book Review). His newest novel, The Day the Sun Died - winner of the Dream of the Red Chamber Award, one of the most prestigious honors for Chinese-language novels - is a haunting story of a town caught in a waking nightmare.
In a little village nestled in the Balou mountains, fourteen-year-old Li Niannian and his parents run a funeral parlor. One evening, he notices a strange occurrence. Instead of preparing for bed, more and more neighbors appear in the streets and fields, carrying on with their daily business as if the sun hadn't already set. Li Niannian watches, mystified. As hundreds of residents are found dreamwalking, they act out the desires they've suppressed during waking hours. Before long, the community devolves into chaos, and it's up to Li Niannian and his parents to save the town before sunrise.
"Starred Review. The interweaving of politics and delusion creates a powerful resonance that is amplified by Tianbao’s borderline mythical plan for how to 'drive away the darkness,' leading to an unforgettable ending. This is a riveting, powerful reading experience." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. As dreamscape realized, however horrible, Yan's novel belongs in the company of Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo and even James Joyce's Ulysses. - Kirkus
"This exuberant but sinister fable confirms its author as one of China's most audacious and enigmatic novelists ... [Lianke] seeds his reader's imagination, and his outlandish fantasia germinates many varieties of interpretation." - The Economist (UK)
"A brave and unforgettable novel, full of tragic poise and political resonance, masterfully shifting between genres and ways of storytelling, exploring the ways in which history and memory are resurrected, how dark, private desires seep or flood out." - Irish Times
"Yan's disgust for his country's moral degradation is unmistakable: a predatory ruling party exploiting its people even in death." - The Guardian (UK)
"In this novel, dreams suggest that the present is still haunted by nightmares ... Remarkable." - The Scotsman (UK)
"Powerful ... Poignant and unsettling." - Mail on Sunday (UK)
"Gloriously defiant ... Sophisticated in the layered, gothic excesses of its allegorical zombie narrative ... A powerful, captivating work of art." - South China Morning Post
This information about The Day the Sun Died was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Yan Lianke was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China. He is the author of numerous story collections and novels, including The Day the Sun Died; The Years, Months, Days; The Explosion Chronicles; The Four Books; Lenin's Kisses; Serve the People!; and Dream of Ding Village. Among many accolades, he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, 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 received two of China's most prestigious literary honors, the Lu Xun Prize and the Lao She Award. He lives and writes in Beijing.
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