The Four Books

By: Yan Lianke, Carlos Rojas - translator

Narrated by: George Backman

Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

From master storyteller Yan Lianke, winner of the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize and a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, The Four Books is a powerful, daring novel of the dog-eat-dog psychology inside a labor camp for intellectuals during Mao's Great Leap Forward. Yan is a renowned author in China and among its most censored; his mythical, sometimes surreal tale cuts to the bone in its portrayal of the struggle between authoritarian power and man's will to prevail against the darkest odds through camaraderie, love, and faith.

In the ninety-ninth district of a sprawling reeducation compound, freethinking artists and academics are detained to strengthen their loyalty to Communist ideologies. Here, the Musician and her lover, the Scholar, along with the Author and the Theologian, are forced to carry out grueling physical work and are encouraged to inform on each other for dissident behavior. The prize: winning a chance at freedom. They're overseen by preadolescent supervisor the Child, who delights in reward systems and excessive punishments. When agricultural and industrial production quotas are raised to an unattainable level, the ninety-ninth district dissolves into lawlessness. And then, as inclement weather and famine set in, they are abandoned by the regime and left alone to survive.

©2010 Yan Lianke. English translation copyright 2015 by Carlos Rojas. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2015 Audible Inc.

History never to be repeated

This is a "factional" account of a group of sent down educated people in late 50s China. Everything you've read is there... the mind games, the cooked-up misdemeanours, the dehumanization, agricultural and industrial failures, and eventually the mass starvation and cannibalism. To read these things written by a Chinese author, no doubt informed by family stories and domestic scholarship is powerful and moving.

Although a little long, the story is a fascinating audiobook, brilliantly performed by Mr Backman. Highly recommended.

Anti-Christian

“The Four Books” is a satire exposing the fallibility of belief in a Christian God. Yan Lianke is a Chinese author living in Beijing whose books and short stories are banned by the government. The main character in Lianke's story is called “Author” who is charged with responsibility for two of “The Four Books”. Two books are titled “criminal records” and “secret reports” written by "Author" for a camp commandant to know who and what everyone in a prison camp is thinking and doing. The other two books are less clearly identified but there is the “Scholar’s” book and presumably, the Christian Bible. The main characters in Lianke’s book are the “Boy”, the “Scholar”, the “Musician”, and the “Author”.

Lianke chooses one period in China’s history as an example of religions and governments’ failure to peacefully guide or manage society. Undoubtedly, Lianke chooses China’s story because that is the culture he most intimately understands. Lianke shows how religion and government ineptly handle human nature. The weakness in Lianke’s argument is that self-interest is an individual human characteristic. Self-interest cannot be erased by Buddhism, any religion, or government. Buddhist belief does not ameliorate aberrant self-interest that deviates from those who choose not to seek peace and wisdom.

Self-interest in a famine leads some to prostitute themselves, murder their equals, inferiors or superiors, and become cannibalistic dead or some combination thereof. No widely accepted religion or government seems to have found a solution to equitably treat individuals’ self-interest. Lianke believes Buddhism is an answer, but one wonders how an individual's search for peace and wisdom will feed the hungry.

A story about our darkest human side

For those who struggle to understand why we have wars, concentration camps, revolting inequalities. It is a light shed on the inimaginable resilience of the human being facing horrible extreme darkness of the spirit and hardship. Why are we causing all this suffering to each other? And, the central question of the book, what gives us the power to resist the darkest physical and psychical hardship? The author's answer is coming at the end of the book, after a trip through darkness, cold, famine, pain and death.... The narrator is as well fabulous. I wish more Audible books would be read with this expressivity and clarity.