Serve the people! - Lianke Yan

A sexually charged satire of the Cultural Revolution and a huge underground hit in China, where it is banned.

'Slanders Mao Zedong, the army, and is overflowing with sex & Do not distribute, pass around, comment on, excerpt from it or report on it.' Chinese Central Propaganda Bureau


This political satire by one of China's most distinguished authors has been banned in its native land for its depiction of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) during the Cultural Revolution. Set in 1967, at the peak of the Mao cult, when 'Serve the People' was one of the great man's most famous slogans, it tells the story of the bored wife of a military commander who artfully seduces a peasant soldier. When the lovers discover that the sacrilegious act of breaking a statue of Mao deliciously increases their desire, they compete to see who can destroy the most sacred icons of their Great Leader - smashing the commander's beloved Mao icons, ripping up the "Little Red Book" or defacing the Great Helmsman's epigrams. Defacing an image of Mao was punishable by death during the Cultural Revolution. Yan Lianke tramples on the most sacred taboos of the army, the revolution, sexuality and political etiquette. As a subversive critique of official corruption, leadership hypocrisy and the insanity of the Cultural Revolution, his book has a huge cult following in China.