Over the past twenty years, Chinese novelist Yan Lianke has emerged as one of the most important writers in the world. In Discovering Fiction, Yan offers insights into his views on literature and realism, the major works that inspired him, and his theories of writing. He juxtaposes discussions of the high realism of Leo Tolstoy and Lu Xun against Franz Kafka’s modernism and Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realism, charting the relationship between causality, truth, and modes of realism. He also discusses his approach to realism, which he terms “mythorealism”—a way of capturing the world’s underlying truth by relying on the allegories, myths, legends, and dreamscapes that emerge from daily life. Revealing and instructive, Discovering Fiction gives readers an unprecedented look into the mind and art of a literary giant.

Yan Lianke is the author of Hard Like Water, The Day the Sun Died, The Explosion Chronicles, The Four Books, and many other novels and story collections. Winner of the Franz Kafka Prize and a two-time finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, Yan teaches at Renmin University in Beijing and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Carlos Rojas is Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. He has translated several of Yan’s novels, including Hard Like Water, The Day the Sun Died, and The Explosion Chronicles.

Translator's Introduction. Creating Reality and Surpassing Realism / Carlos Rojas  ix
1. Realism's Four Levels of Truth  1
2. Zero Causality  35
3. Full Causality  51
4. Partial Causality  59
5. Inner Causality  83
6. Mythorealism  99
Appendix: Chinese Authors and Works  125
Notes  129
Bibliography  133
Index  137