Geling Yan is an award-winning Chinese novelist and screenwriter. Born in Shanghai, she published her first novel in 1985. Since then she has written numerous short stories, essays, scripts and novels including, in English, The Uninvited and The Lost Daughter of Happiness. Several of Geling Yan's works have been adapted for the screen, the latest being The Flowers of War which has been filmed by acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou and stars Christian Bale. Geling Yan divides her time between Berlin and China.
Great storytelling * Observer * Powerful and poignant * Press Association * The novel is rewarding for its spare prose and subtle treatment of the conflicts, quarrels, racial ambiguities and acts of transcendent heroism woven into the story... There are doomed love stories, amid the tragedies, but they are drawn from a deeper well and speak to the persistence of humanity in the grimmest of circumstances -- Isabel Hilton * Guardian * Yan masterfully depicts bubbling tensions...testament to the bravery of women in the most horrifying of circumstances...(beautifully translated by Nicky Harman) -- Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore * Independent * I have long been a fan of Geling Yan's fiction for its power to disturb us out of our ordinary worlds. She is a writer of importance. In spare and unsentimental prose, she shows us the human condition in extreme times. The Flowers of War is yet another accomplished and riveting tale that touches us at the center of our being. -- Amy Tan