The Explosion Chronicles

Yan's latest translated-into-English title offers multiple rewarding options. As straightforward narrative, it follows the astounding transformation of Explosion, a rural mountain village, into a "megalopolis" through the entangled lives of the Kong family's four sons—a teacher, a politician, a soldier, and a caretaker. Add corruption, betrayal, power, obsession, and (of course) women, and the result is already an epic page-turner. Yet, as translator Rojas (kudos for his fluid rendering) illuminates in his context-revealing opening note, this is a multilayered marvel. Modeled after two traditional "historiographic genres"—dynastic histories and "local gazetteers" used to record Chinese history—the narrative features a fictional version of the author as both witness and transcriber, who unapologetically admits he's taken the assignment for "enormous financial compensation." Combining unflinching observation, stinging satire, and what (real-life) Yan calls "mythorealism" (using nonrealism to explain China's reality-defying reality), what happens to Explosion becomes a chilling metanarrative for China's explosive metamorphosis.