The Women

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  • Ebook

    Forthcoming

A portrait of China’s century through the story of the women in the author life, from the highly acclaimed novelist, twice shortlisted for the International Booker Prize

Part memoir and part literary nonfiction, The Women captures the harsh and unequal experience of being a woman in 1970s and 80s rural China. Written by the award winning author Yan Lianke, the book is both a tribute to the women who shaped his life and a sociological critique of China’s treatment of women. “In the countryside, the human being is a worker,” but rural women’s work is diminished, their hardship ignored. Through humor and tragedy, Lianke shares their story and reveals a side of Chinese life rarely accessed by the West.

Reviews

  • One of China’s greatest living authors and fiercest satirists.

    Jonathan WattsThe Guardian
  • One of the masters of modern Chinese literature, Yan Lianke gives all the pleasures one gets from reading. He can extract humor from the bleakest situation.

    Yung Chang
  • No other writer in today's China has so consistently explored, dissected and mocked the past six and a half decades of Chinese communist rule.

    Isabel Hilton