Lenin's Kisses: A Novel

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.

It's a dark satire on the underlying hypocrisies of modern China. Crony capitalism has made the ruling members of the communist party rich and powerful while outwardly it continues to pay lip service to the ideals of socialism. Similarly, the poor villagers in this book get continually duped in one scheme after another, the most prominent of which is to buy Lenin's corpse as a tourist attraction.Since it's translated from Chinese, occasionally the metaphors or sentence construction feels unnatural, but overall it's a great book.

Really enjoyed this book. Kind of a dark comedy. Great author, highly recommend. Also, the audiobook reader was fantastic.

Lenin's Kisses is a great read about contemporary China, disguised as a kind of folk tale. I highly recommend it.

It's slow and a bit didactic, but it was readable. Pacing, translation and editing could be improved on this, and all the Chinese novels I've read recently. Lenin's Kisses is still worth your time for its insight into Modern Chinese history.

This is an unbelievably amusing tale with laugh out loud scenarios of innocence and greed which is such a devastating critique of Chinese society that I am still amazed it won China's highest literary award!!

The translation lost its flavor. Can I have a chinese version instead?

Great book....well written and a great story. 5 stars.

The book was advertised and sold as a new book but the print is unreadable. The print barely has any ink.

ich mag die Bücher von Yan Lianke, diesmal gebe ich aber nur 3 Sterne da mir das Buch ein wenig langatmig vorkam. Eine nette Geschichte aber mir gefielen die vorherigen Bücher besser.