Torrance, Ronald

This proposal considers the joint issues of complicity and compromise in the fictional works and authorial careers of Mo Yan, Ma Jian and Yan Lianke: three contemporary Chinese writers whose collective works challenge the boundaries between literature and history in a country where literary representations of the past are highly politicised. The dynamic of each author’s relationship with the Chinese censorship apparatus, as it applies to literary texts, is considered alongside analysis of their respective complicity (or compromise) in relation to this system of political censorship. As writers whose collective work crosses the boundaries of what is considered suitable for public consumption in China, Mo Yan, Ma Jian and Yan Lianke each exemplify a different ability to publish their work within the mainland, yet their work is simultaneously disseminated, analysed and categorised into Western readers’ imaginings of contemporary China at large. The context of this investigation is further developed by a case study of the authors‘ careers in order to understand how authorship and fiction functions under the constraints of literary censorship. Collectively, the analysis of the works by Mo Yan, Ma Jian and Yan Lianke seeks to illustrate that the joint issues of complicity and compromise are deeply embedded within each author’s fictional works and suggests that contemporary Chinese fiction yields a unique insight into the role that writers and literature play in beginning to potentially unravel and expand upon the concept of complicity evident in the context of contemporary Chinese literature today.