Description
In Mao’s China, a re-education compound’s ninety-ninth district traps freethinking artists and scholars in a system designed to break minds and manufacture loyalty. As quotas tighten and survival becomes conditional, the Musician and her lover, the Scholar, and other prisoners—including an Author and a Theologian—are forced into exhausting labor and pressured to police one another for the slim promise of freedom. Their preadolescent supervisor, the Child, turns ideology into a cruel game of rewards and punishments, while the regime’s escalating demands push the camp toward collapse. When famine and abandonment arrive, the novel becomes a searing exploration of coercion, complicity, and the fragile line between belief and brutality—told in Yan Lianke’s sharp, darkly inventive style.
Available Editions
paperback
Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
Published Jan 1, 2015
276 pages
ISBN: 9780802191878
Reviews
No ratings yet. Be the first!
No written reviews yet.
Details
First Published
2015
Language
eng
Translation
From: chi
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for The Four Books by Yan Lianke.