Hard Like Water

A breakneck adventure story following the erotic love affair of party cadres Aijun and Hongmei during China's Cultural RevolutionOn his return to his village in the Balou Mountains, soldier Gao Aijun sees a young woman wandering barefoot along the railway tracks in the warm late-afternoon sun. Her name is Hongmei. Aijun is instantly intoxicated, his wife - waiting patiently for him at home - quickly forgotten. Both Aijun and Hongmei hurl themselves into their town's revolutionary struggle. Spending their days and nights stamping out feudalism, writing pamphlets and organising rallies, they become inseparable: they are the engines of history. The couple dig a 'tunnel of love' - to further the revolution, of course, but also to connect their homes and provide a chamber for their secret rendezvous. While the unsuspecting villagers sleep, they sing political songs and compete in shouting-matches of Maoist slogans before making earth-shattering love. But when Hongmei's husband finds them together one evening, their dreams of a life together begin to fall apart. Hard Like Water is a novel of immense emotional force from one of China's greatest contemporary writers, a universal human drama about the nature of power and the dangers of hubris, as well as the freewheeling momentum of love and sexual desire.

Review

A vivid, even lurid, portrait of the vandalistic savagery and hypocrisy of the post-1966 Cultural Revolution . . . Well-served by Carlos Rojas's agile and richly textured translation -- Boyd Tonkin ― Financial TimesA fascinating work . . . Yan's 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 -- John Phipps ― The TimesYan probes the darkness and absurdity of Chinese society and history with a sexy satirical tale of the Cultural Revolution as wrought in a small village . . . distinctive and punchy. Yan's exuberant and unflinching tragicomedy is undeniably appealing -- Publishers WeeklyA gritty, memorable story . . . Yan's study of power and class struggle becomes, in the end, a near-classic tragedy -- Kirkus ReviewYan's signature biting wit creates another indelible work of bittersweet humor and socio-political insight ― Booklist

About the Author

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 Étranger. The Day the Sun Died won the Dream of the Red Chamber Award for the World's Most Distinguished Novel in Chinese. He lives and writes in Beijing.Yan Lianke's cover artwork features the work of leading contemporary Chinese artists. Turn to the final pages to learn more about them.