Deep into the Balou Mountains of China is hiding the village of Liven (受活/Shouhuo in the original - the same name as the novel's title; the novel plays with its language a lot and the translator Rojas had done a marvelous job with that (or so it seems - I do not read Chinese but the English version works on the language level)). Almost all its residents are disabled in one way or another and for most of its history the world simply forgot that it existed. When the story opens in the 1990s, the residents are trying very hard to get back to that stage of being unknown and forgotten - they really do not like the world they rejoined a few years earlier.

Chief Liu, the county chief, has grand ambitions - which are somewhat curtailed by the fact that he is in charge of an insignificant region where nothing interesting happens. With the collapse of USSR, the Lenin Mausoleum is in danger of collapsing so he decides he will buy the corpse, build a new home for it in the mountains and charge a lot of money for people who come to see it - after all why wouldn't everyone want to come and see it. But all his plans to secure the money end up in disasters until he visits Liven (not for a first time apparently) and decides to create a troupe of its disabled performers - showcasing them around the region. And off they go to conquer the countryside.

The only voice of reason in the village is Grandma Mao Zhi - the informal leader of the community whose only ambition is to make sure that Liven is left alone. So despite all disagreements (and personal animosity), deals are struck and the plan seems to work. Well, for awhile anyway.

As absurd as most of the plot can sound, it is really a very thinly veiled reference to the change China was undergoing in the 90s. And through the notes, we get to see the previous few decades as well, turning the novel into almost a historical novel.

The novel is a challenging read. You do not even know how to read it at first (or ever I suspect) - there are notes which can be just clarification of words or can be long background stories. And some of those notes have notes which have notes and so on. These notes are sometimes placed at the end of a chapter and sometimes they form the next chapter but there is no rhyme or reason in where they appear in a given chapter (I suspect it was done to ensure the number of chapters but who knows). So do you read the novel in the order it is printed or do you go chasing after the notes going deeper and deeper? That is left to the reader to decide - I ended up doing both in different places depending on how much I wanted to stay with the current story. Except that not reading the notes made some of the current stories read in a different way compared to how they read when you had the backstory. And then the book constantly plays with your head - Lianke uses only odd numbers for his books and chapters and notes numbering so it often feels like you missed one somewhere... And you can miss a lot of the things hiding in the titles if you are not paying attention - for example the titles of the Books form a tree (from roots to fruit and branches). How that is supposed to be interpreted is a left to the reader to decide.

At the end it is really a story of the old vs. the new, of the traditional vs. the dreams of the cadres. It is a satire of China in the same way the science fiction tales of the Soviet and Eastern European authors managed to criticize the regime even under the strictest censure a few decades earlier. And just as with these stories, the humans are just human - warts and all. So awful things happen to people who do not deserve them and some almost supernatural occurrences happen occasionally (more in the magical realism space than going into fantasy). But the story could get very repetitive at times (especially when money calculations started - it was a deliberate mocking of the lust for money but...) and the back story was a lot more interesting than the story in the 1990s.

The novel won't work for everyone - it is too weird in ways which really do not conform with anything I can think of. You can see different Chinese and Western influences (and some Eastern European ones) but it is something different (or at least I had never read anything like that before). It felt like some of the goriness in some scenes was there almost only for the shock value of it and the whole story could have used an editor to shorten it a bit - by the end the whole thing was getting too much. But at the same time, it had interesting points to make about the treatment of the disabled and of how China had been changing since the beginning of the Revolution (the current one anyway).

The translator's note at the start of the novel is very helpful. As the novel uses the Chinese 60 years calendar, the translator decided to assist the readers by mentioning the date as we will know it the first time the year is mentioned. I wish he had added it every time or had added all mentioned years in a glossary (with a few more things in there) but in a way that added yet another layer to the puzzle box which is masquerading as a novel here.

I almost did not finish the novel - the beginning was too absurd and bizarre. But it was the back story that drew me in and by the time I realized what was happening, I was halfway through so I just decided to finish it. And even if it did not completely work for me, there were enough in there for me to look for other books by the author.

As for the choice of cover and title of the English edition... I am still not sure what this was all about (yes, it is not absolutely illogical but it also pushes you into expecting a different kind of novel in a way). ( )

This is an wonderfully satirical tale set in a Chinese village whose residents are disabled in one way or another, and said village is unclaimed by any of the official regions surrounding it. A ridiculous bureaucrat decides that they should purchase Lenin's corpse from Russia and become wealthy by charging for people to visit. A completely absurd series of events transpire over several years. The whole story is a thinly veiled treatise on the absurdity of Communism as practiced in China. The only flaw in this book, in my opinion, is that the story drags out a bit too long. It is an excellent read with wit, intelligence, and fabulous characters. ( )

Another Great Novel from Yan Lianke

Yan Lianke is one of my favorite authors. His book "Dream of Ding Village" is a masterpiece and now that Carlos Rojas is quickly translating Yan's books, I look forward to each one.

In "Lenin's Kisses," an isolated mountain village is turned into a traveling sideshow by a nearby communist cadre. The sideshow travels the country making money so that the cadre can fund a massive park project, though the project has not been fully thought out. The sideshow's success brings great changes in the minds of the villagers, though the changes have not yet been fully realized. In between the narrative are wonderful vignettes that describe the history of the village and the cadre. Throughout the book, there are demonstrations of the disconnect between generations, between villagers, and between local and provincial governments.

The vignettes are written as footnotes, separate chapters really. The reader does not need to look up the footnotes as they come in the order. That is, there is no need to interrupt the narrative for the sake of the footnotes.

The difficulty in reading is due to some very repetitive descriptions. While this is typical among many Chinese authors, it can sometimes drag on. The repetition in "Lenin's Kisses" serves to demonstrate the thinking and ruminations of everyone involved.

While it can be a difficult read, it is nevertheless very satisfying. ( )

Yan boldly plunges into the psychic gap between China's decades-old conditioned response to communist doctrine and its redefinition of itself as a capitalist power, creating with bold, carnivalesque strokes a heartbreaking story of greed, corruption, and the dangers of utopia.

Décevante déception... Toutes les 50 pages l'attrait diminue, et vu que il y a 12 fois 50 pages on tombe bien bas... Le problème de l'étiquette "satire sociale" et "roman débridé" c'est que ça fait bien en quatrième de couverture, mais qu'en général c'est pour vendre de romans plus foutoirs que foutraques... L'auteur serait censuré en Chine? Soit la censure est omniprésente, soit elle n'a que ça à faire... ( )