It has become the most important setting of Yan's literary world, and the most noted fictional landscape created in Chinese literature.

This is particularly true with the publication of the "Balou Mountain Series" comprising The Passing of [Riguang liunian], Hard as Water [Jianying rushui] and Lenin's Kisses [Shouhuo] around 2000.

The depictions of Chinese history and reality in these novels are characterised by a sharp edge which is simultaneously profound, absurd and carnivalesque.

The same writer suggests that Yan distinguishes himself with his sophisticated insights on the society expressed in his fictions, and that his writings often shows a devastating humour.

The Japanese magazine The World considers Yan and his writings important setters of standard for Chinese literature and freedom of expression.

This advocacy in the construction of an "absolute reality" is put into practice in his own novels The Explosion Chronicles and The Day the Sun Died.

Their plots are depictions of a reality that is "Chinese through-and-through", but filled with imaginative "possibilities" and "mytho-realist" "impossibilities", which express his vision of his China being a "dark", "desperate" place where the idea of "future" only brings "anxieties".

His novels Serve the People, Dream of Ding Village, Lenin's Kisses, The Four Books and The Explosion Chronicles have been translated into a number of languages and distributed widely in the Americas, Europe and the Australia.

They are collected in My Reality, My -ism [Wode xianshi, wode zhuyi], The Red Chopsticks of the Witch [Wupo de hong kuaizi], Tearing Apart and Piling Up [Chaijie yu dieping], Selected Overseas Speeches of Yan Lianke [Yan Lianke haiwai yanjiang ji], and Silence and Rest [Chenmo yu chuaixi].

This is the first attempt from a Chinese writer active in the international literary circles to contribute to the theoretical discussions of Realism in the global context.

In 2016 Yan was appointed visiting professor of Chinese Culture by the Hong Kong University of Science Technology to teach writing courses.

Yan has described it as a “creative process” whose aim is to “surpass realism.”[8] According to University of Alberta scholar, Haiyan Xie, “mythorealism incorporates both Chinese and Western literary elements while remaining primarily grounded in Chinese cultural and literary tradition.”[9] Such a rendering involves rejecting traditional narrative practices, for example linearity, logical cause-and-effect relationships, and, to a certain degree, verisimilitude itself.

The mythorealist connection with reality does not lie in straightforward cause-and-effect links, but rather relies on human souls, minds … and the authors’ extraordinary fabrications based on reality… .

Imaginations, metaphors, myths, legends, dreams, fantasy, demonization, and transplantation born from everyday life and social reality can all serve as mythorealist methods and channels.

[10]In his analysis of certain of Yan’s post-Maoist works, Weijie Song, Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at Rutgers – New Brunswick, writes that “…Yan’s imaginative configurations of literary settings, from the metamorphosis of his hometown in Henan Province (in particular the Balou Mountains and Northwestern villages) to the transfiguration of post-Maoist Beijing (especially the construction and destruction of his former home in that city, called ‘Garden No.

Set during the Cultural Revolution, at the peak of the cult of personality of Chairman Mao, the novel tells the story of an affair between the Liu Lian, the wife of a powerful military commander, and a young soldier, Wu Dawang.

[1] The title is a reference to a phrase originally coined by Mao Zedong in a 1944 article of the same name that commemorated the death of the red army soldier Zhang Side.

The Chinese government ordered the publisher to recall all 40,000 copies of the magazine, which in turn created huge demand for the novel.

These include the novels Serve the People [Wei renmin fuwu], Dream of Ding Village [Dingzhuang meng], The Four Books, [Sishu], The Dimming Sun [Rixi], and a range of his essays and speeches.

Many of his works have been translated and circulated in more than 30 languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Czech, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian and Portuguese.