The Four Books by Yan Lianke is a stark, inventive novel set in a remote reeducation compound during Mao's Great Leap Forward. The narrative follows detained intellectuals as they navigate enforced labor, shifting loyalties, and the pressures of a punitive reward-and-punishment system.

Through characters identified by vocation—musician, scholar, author, theologian—and overseen by a precocious child supervisor, the story examines how authoritarian demands warp human relationships. Rising quotas, scarcity, and abandonment push the compound toward chaos, and the novel moves between surreal moments and sharp social observation.

Readers seeking intense moral portraiture and political satire will find Yan Lianke's voice both uncompromising and imaginative. The book probes themes of power, survival, solidarity, and the cost of cultural repression.

Key features

• Setting: reeducation labor camp during the Great Leap Forward
• Themes: authority, survival, camaraderie, satire
• Publisher: Grove Press • Hardcover • 338 pages

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