Yan Lianke. [Photo by Zhang Wei/China Daily]

Chinese author Yan Lianke recently won the Twitter Literary Prize, as voted upon by Japanese readers. This is the first time an Asian writer has won the award. American writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz and French author Laurent Binet were all previous winners of the award.

The Japanese translation of The Joy of Living (Shou Huo, 2003) by Yan Lianke was launched in Japan at the end of last year and has broken all records of sales of Chinese writers’ works, being reprinted four times in four months.

According to a teacher in Tohoku University, the Japanese version of The Joy of Living took ten years to translate and was finally published at the end of last year with a first run of 8,000 copies, which immediately sold out. As of right now, the book has been reprinted three times, with each run consisting of 3,000 copies.

Readers say that aside from reflecting the realities of today’s China, Yan’s novel is innovative in structure, plot and language.

The 57-year-old Beijing-based writer, whose work is highly satirical, has won several awards in recent years, including the Lu Xun Literary Prize in 2000, Lao She Literature Award in 2004 and the Kafka Prize in 2014.

Yan's main works:

Lenin's Kisses (2003)

Eulogy and Academe (2008)

My Father's Generation and I (2009)

Discovering Novel (2011)

Beijing, The Last Memory (2012)

The Chronicle of Zhalie（2013）

Related: Chinese writer wins prestigious Kafka Prize

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