The Years, Months, Days (Two Translated Novellas)
Yan LiankeAmong many awards & honors, he has been twice a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize & he was awarded the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize for his impressive body of work.
Now, for the first time, his two most acclaimed novellas have been translated & published in English.“Timeless” & “marvelous”, are a haunting story of a widow who goes to extremes to provide a normal life for her four physically & mentally disabled children. When she finds out that bones “the closer from kin the better” can cure their illnesses & prevent future generations from the same fate, she feeds them a medicinal soup made from the bones of her dead husband. But after running out of bones, she resorts to a measure that only a mother can take.
A luminous, moving fable, The Years, Months, Days — a bestselling classic in China & winner of the prestigious Lu Xun Literary Prize — tells of an elderly man who stays in his small village after a terrible drought forces everyone to leave. Unable to make the grueling march through the mountains, he becomes the lone inhabitant, along with a blind dog. Tending to a single ear of corn, & fending off the natural world from overtaking the village, every day is a victory over death.
With touches of the fantastical, these two novellas—masterpieces of the form—reflect the universality of mankind’s will to live, live well, & live with purpose whatever the odds.