The Family Plot

A son who wants to kill his father. A father who wants to kill his wife. A wife who wants to kill her only son: this eye-popping new novel by one of the world’s great literary satirists is full of surprises and home truths. In Gaotian Town, Central Plains, China, a family lives in abject poverty. The son dreams of going to America, while his father fantasises about building a new house. His long-suffering mother worries about her only child’s waywardness. And all of them want to kill each other. Class tensions run high in the town, from the wealthiest and most envied family in town to the girl working at the beauty parlour who longs to escape and the entrepreneurial grocer whose success has consequences for multiple lives. Set in a time of turbulent change, The Family Plot reveals the family’s slow descent into murderous chaos in a fable about the price of desperation and desire. With his dark humour, Yan Lianke explores inequality, modernity, domestic strife and the decay of tradition – and how far people will go in the quest for a better life.