One of the representative authors of contemporary Chinese literature, Yan Lianke was born in Song County, Henan Province, China, in 1958. Widely renowned for his sharp perception of reality and his experimental writing style, Yan has been acknowledged as one of the most influential writers in China and also one of the most controversial. He is the winner of numerous awards, including two Lu Xun Literary Prizes in China, the Hua Zong Literature Award in Malaysia, the 2014 Franz Kafka Prize in the Czech Republic, the 2016 Dream of the Red Chamber Award in Hong Kong, the 2021 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature in the United States and the Royal Society of Literature’s International Writer Lifetime Award in the United Kingdom, the 2022 Lee Hochul Literary Prize for Peace in Korea, the 2024 Hsing Yun Global Chinese Literary Prize’s Contribution Award in Taiwan, and more. He was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize three times between 2012 and 2016 with both short fiction and novels, which brought him worldwide acclaim. His works have been translated into more than 30 languages and published in more than 200 foreign language editions. He is currently a professor of literature at the Renmin University of China and a visiting professor of Chinese culture at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
