Seeking the light

Known for his sharp observation and unique writing style, Yan Lianke is the first Chinese writer to win the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize. Photos provided to China Daily

In 2013, Yan was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

He won China's top literary award, the Lao She Literature Prize, in 2004 for his novel Shou Huo (Lenin's Kisses), in which residents of a fictional 1990s village plan to buy Vladimir Lenin's embalmed body from Russia to build a mausoleum in their village as a tourist draw.

The book was written in a peasant dialect of Henan province, and "shou huo" literally means "to receive life".

According to Gao Xing, a literary critic, Yan deserves the prize for both artistic and ideological achievements through his writings.

"Yan has distinguished himself from others who write on China's army or rural life, because he has rich experiences, a sharp observation, fertile imagination and a skillful writing style," Gao says.

"He has great writing technique but that becomes secondary to the depth of his thoughts.

"His works are deeply rooted in China's realities, and he is one of the few writers who has the courage to write honestly about the absurdities of reality."

The Kafka prize panel announced in May that Yan, a first-time nominee, had won from among eight other globally renowned authors because of his "artistically exceptional" works.

During his award acceptance speech at a town hall in Prague, the Beijing-based author spoke of his childhood in the early 1960s, when widespread famine killed millions of Chinese, and how the memories influenced his writing.

He said as a little boy, he was exposed to "darkness of life", when his mother pointed to a wall and told him that a special kind of edible clay would save people if they were to starve to death, and that there was another that would kill people if eaten, according to Qq.com, a Chinese portal website that had a reporter at the event.