HARD LIKE WATER

Yan Lianke's 2009 novel, translated by Carlos Rojas, follows a love affair between the party cadres Aijun and Hongmei during the Cultural Revolution. Aijun spots Hongmei on a railway and is instantly smitten, wondering if “she had been sitting there holding up half the sky all day” just so they could meet. Their romance, which sets their blood boiling as much as their shared class struggle, reaches feverishness as they dig tunnels for the revolution and then make love in the dark. Yan is known for his tongue-in-cheek, “mythorealist” style that sets absurdist storylines against the backdrop of history.