Fiction in translation

The Four Books review – satire from a Mao-era labour camp

Intellectuals are collected in a re-education camp during the Great

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The work of the Chinese author Yan Lianke reminds us that free
expression is always in contention – to write is to risk the hand of
power. The Four Books is an Orwellian satire of life in a re-education
labour camp for intellectuals during Mao’s Great Leap Forward. In
District 99, one area of a sprawling re-education complex, no one has a