Big Picture: Contemporary China With Author Yan Lianke

Yan Lianke is one of the most internationally acclaimed Chinese authors. He started out as propaganda writer for the Chinese People's Liberation Army aged 20 – and was released from his duties two decades later due to his satirical novels addressing issues and absurdities in modern China. His essays are outspoken, his fiction critical, causing some of his works to be banned in China. But both nationally and internationally, he has won numerous literary awards – among them the Franz Kafka Prize.

Yan Lianke will join us for a reading of “Xin Jing “ / “Heart Sutra“, a novel about the tension between religious belief and the state in today's China, and a conversation about his writing.