Hard Like Water

(Paperback)

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A laugh-out-loud political and sexual satire about the Chinese Cultural Revolution, by the acclaimed author of Serve The People! Hard Like Water is a brilliant satire about love and revolution- a thrilling story about an erotic affair during China's Cultural Revolution. In revolutionary struggle, if you don't defeat your enemy, your enemy will defeat you... On his return to his hometown-and his wife-to aid the Cultural Revolution, soldier Aijun sees a young woman wandering barefoot along the railway tracks in the late-afternoon sun. Her name is Hongmei. From this moment on, an 'unspeakably beautiful flower' blooms in Aijun's heart. Aijun and Hongmei hurl themselves into the town's revolutionary struggle, spending their days and nights stamping out feudalism, writing pamphlets and attending rallies- they are the engines of history. But soon their sexual and revolutionary fervour begin to merge and a crazed new love explodes between them. The party bosses are impressed by the ardour of the pair's work. Emboldened, the couple build a 'tunnel of love'-to further the revolution, of course, but also to connect their homes and create a 'nuptial chamber' for their secret rendezvous. But when Hongmei's husband finds them there one evening, and the young couple are arrested for framing a comrade, their dreams of a life together begin to fall apart. In the spirit of Serve the People!, Yan Lianke's sparkling first novel in English, Hard Like Water is a thoroughly entertaining tale of sexual infatuation and revolutionary zeal, a universal human drama about the nature of political power, the danger of hubris, and the freewheeling momentum of love and sexual desire-from one of China's greatest contemporary writers.

Reviews

The new masterpiece by eminent Chinese writer Yan Lianke . . . two revolutionaries take matters disastrously into their own hands while conducting a crazed affair. * Margaret Atwood *
A master of imaginative satire. His work is animated by an affectionate loyalty to his peasant origins in the poverty-stricken province of Henan, and fierce anger over the political abuses of the regime. * Guardian *
I can think of few better novelists than Yan, with his superlative gifts for storytelling and penetrating eye for truth. * New York Times Book Review *
Yan Lianke is one of the best contemporary Chinese writers. * Independent *
'An indefatigable tale of love, delusion and revolution. Yan Lianke speaks to the agitation and absurdity of human existence, and the unquenchable need to believe in a cause greater than ourselves.' * Jessica Au, author of Cold Enough for Snow *
Yans great subject is false consciousness, the way we knowingly come to participate in a world that doesnt resemble reality...Hard Like Water is a difficult but fascinating work, a novel in which the reader is constantly urged to measure the discrepancy between whats being said and whats happening...Yans challenge, to his samizdat readers in China and those beyond, is to look in the murky glass of ambition and self-deception and find the face that resembles their own. * The Times *
'Yan lets us share the aphrodisiac high of revolutionary madness even as he skewers the tyranny of narcissismand the narcissism of tyranny...Everyone will be assessed and judged, Aijun warns. Now, even in the west, that note of vengeful purity sounds again. * Financial Times UK *
Its surreal, and amusing, biting and fun. * Australian *
An important book, if only because of its refreshingly sensual vision of the appeal of the Cultural Revolution[I]n our era of heightened political tensions, with conservatives and progressives polarized, the experience of an ambitious Chinese revolutionary convinced of his correctness has much to tell us about ourselves. * Arts Fuse *
'You might not think that Chinas Cultural Revolution would be the typical setting for eroticism, but then again, this era of heightened tension is perfect for this kind of fever-pitched romance. * Happy Mag *
'A blistering tour de force...Carlos Rojass exceptional translation makes English feel new again. Yans linguistic daring, and the novels relentless stream of provocative images and observations, create a sensuous and riveting world Hard Like Water is neither mockery nor satire; it is a sharp, desperately moving analysis of the logic of ideology. Its mashup of literary and political texts poses the uncomfortable and timely question: how did each of us arrive at our certainties * Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing, in the Guardian *

Author Bio

Yan Lianke was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China. He is the author of numerous novels and short-story collections, including Serve the People!, Dream of Ding Village, Lenin's Kisses, The Four Books, The Explosion Chronicles and The Day the Sun Died. He has been awarded the Hua Zhong World Chinese Literature Prize, the Lao She Literary Award, the Dream of the Red Chamber Award and the Franz Kafka Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the International Man Booker Prize, the Principe de Asturias Prize for Letters, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the FT/Oppenheimer Fund Emerging Voices Award and the Prix Femina tranger. The Day the Sun Died won the Dream of the Red Chamber Award for the World's Most Distinguished Novel in Chinese. His memoir Three Brothers was published in 2020. He lives in Beijing.