Criminal Lu Yanshi
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Criminal Lu Yanshi relates the life and times of a Chinese intellectual in the 20th Century. Lu Yanshi, a prodigy from a wealthy Shanghai family, earns a Ph.D. in the United States and sows his wild oats there but cannot escape his stifling social milieu, his overbearing stepmother and his forced marriage to her niece. As war and revolution engulf China, Lu Yanshi speaks out for intellectual integrity and freedom of thought - and pays the price for it in prison and labor camp.While incarcerated, he looks back on his life and realizes that his spurned wife was the true love of his life, and he longs to return to her.
This novel is based on the life experiences of the author's paternal grandfather and maternal step-grandfather. It served as the inspiration for two films by famous Chinese director Zhang Yimou: Coming Home and One Second.
This novel sold over a million copies in its original Chinese edition plus Japanese and Korean translations. The renowned artist Ai Weiwei designed the front cover for this English-language edition.
Geling Yan
Yan Geling is one of the most acclaimed contemporary novelists and screenwriters writing in the Chinese language today. Born in Shanghai, she served with the People's Liberation Army (PLA), starting at age twelve as a dancer in an entertainment troupe. She is the author of numerous novels, short stories, novellas, essays, and scripts. Yan is fluent in English and her best-known novels in the West are The Banquet Bug (published in the UK as The Uninvited) and The Lost Daughter of Happiness (translated by Cathy Silber), as well as the novella and short story collection White Snake and Other Stories (translated by Lawrence A. Walker). She lives in Berlin, Germany.
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Lawrence A Walker
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Lawrence A. Walker is the translator of Geling Yan's White Snake and Other Stories and editor of her English-language work, notably The Banquet Bug (aka The Uninvited). A native of California, he holds a degree in Languages and Linguistics from Georgetown University, an M.B.A. from the University of Illinois and a Master's in Administration and Management from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. He has previously served at diplomatic postings in Shenyang and Taipei, Germany, Mexico and Nigeria as well as at the State Department. In the private sector, he has worked in international trade promotion, venture capital and business development in the San Francisco Bay Area. He lives in Berlin.
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