Yan Lianke is the author of Hard Like Water, The Day the Sun Died, The Explosion Chronicles, The Four Books, and many other novels and story collections. Winner of the Franz Kafka Prize and a two-time finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, Yan teaches at Renmin University in Beijing and th...

Yan Lianke is the author of Hard Like Water, The Day the Sun Died, The Explosion Chronicles, The Four Books, and many other novels and story collections. Winner of the Franz Kafka Prize and a two-time finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, Yan teaches at Renmin University in Beijing and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Carlos Rojas is Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. He has translated several of Yan's novels, including Hard Like Water, The Day the Sun Died, and The Explosion Chronicles.