The Chronicles of Zhalie

In thirty short years, Zhalie, a poor village deep in the mountains, becomes a huge metropolis. It is this expansion, this explosion (because Zhalie comes from zha: to explode, and lie: to split), that the chronicles recount. Born of a dalliance between a prostitute and a thief brought together by a dream, Zhalie from the outset is based on deception and vice.
It is a vitriolic portrait of contemporary China that this latest winner of the Kafka Prize offers us. A world gone mad under the combined tyranny of power and money, and to understand it, we need the flamboyant writings of Yan Lianke, who goes beyond the absurd, beyond magic realism, to dive to the core of the facts to distil their essence.