The Day the Sun Died
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
‘One of the masters of modern Chinese literature’ Jung Chang
This gripping dystopia contrasts the reality of life in China today with the sunny optimism of the ‘Chinese dream’.
One dusk in early June, in a town deep in the Balou mountains, fourteen-year-old Li Niannian notices that something strange is going on. As the residents would usually be settling down for the night, instead they start appearing in the streets and fields. There are people everywhere.
Li Niannian watches, mystified. Until he realises the people are dreamwalking, carrying on with their daily business as if the sun hadn’t already gone down. And before too long, as more and more people succumb, in the black of night all hell breaks loose.
Set over the course of one night, The Day the Sun Died pits chaos and darkness against the bright ‘Chinese dream’ promoted by President Xi Jinping. We are thrown into the middle of an increasingly strange and troubling waking nightmare as Li Niannian and his father struggle to save the town, and persuade the beneficent sun to rise again.
Praise for Yan Lianke's books:
‘Nothing short of a masterpiece’ Guardian
‘A hyper-real tour de force, a blistering condemnation of political corruption and excess’ Financial Times
‘Mordant satire from a brave fabulist’ Daily Mail
‘Exuberant and imaginative’ Sunday Times
‘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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yan (The Years, Months, Days) trains his fantastical, satiric eye on China's policy of forced cremation in this chilling novel about the "great somnambulism" that seizes a rural town. Horrified to learn that the bodies cremated by his brother-in-law in accordance with the mandate to "save farmland" from being wasted on graves leaves behind residual "corpse oil," a funerary shop owner named Tianbao agrees to buy and hide the oil rather than let it be shipped to factories ignorant of its origin. His son, Niannian, helps with this grim task, considering himself "like a tree that had grown up at the entrance of the underworld." That threshold is breached one midsummer night, when the townspeople begin "dreamwalking." Reports arrive of accidental drownings involving the dreamwalkers, then of a murder with an iron rod. Looting and violence spread as more people begin dreamwalking, until the town is "engulfed in the sounds of screams and murderous beatings." The interweaving of politics and delusion creates a powerful resonance that is amplified by Tianbao's borderline mythical plan for how to "drive away the darkness," leading to an unforgettable ending. This is a riveting, powerful reading experience.
