• Yan Lianke is one of the most significant global writers working today. He figures each year as a favored candidate for the Nobel Prize, and there has been a huge surge of interest in his writing after Jiayang Fan’s profile appeared in the New Yorker in October 2018.
• Yan is the recipient of the prestigious Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, and he was the first Chinese writer to win the Franz Kafka Prize. He has been twice short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize (most recently for The Four Books), as well as the Prix Femina Étranger, the Financial Times Oppenheimer Emerging Voices Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the Man Asian Literary Award.
• Heart Sutra is Yan Lianke’s newest work of fiction that is set in contemporary Beijing at a religious training institute for China’s five largest religions. The novel centers on the love story of two young disciples—one a Buddhist, and one a Daoist—that mimics the fabled love story between the Bodhisattva Guanyin and Laozi, which is depicted in gorgeous papercut illustrations throughout the book.
  
• Another major thread in the book focuses on the operatic tug-of-war competitions staged between the institute’s five religions, which explores the relationship between religion and the state.
• Yan’s previous novel, Hard Like Water, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and received glowing reviews in the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, the Financial Times, and the New Yorker.
• Yan’s books continue to backlist, and there has been film interest in The Day the Sun Died, including from Plan B Entertainment, Brad Pitt’s production company.