ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that The Four Books reflects Yan Lianke's Kafkian approach to art, human nature, the human quandary, and messianism. More specifically, Yan's The Four Books and Kafka's The Trial share many concerns: life as a form of confinement, a sense of impending horror, the self's loss of agency in the world, the interconnectedness between art and slander, the artist's connivance with (juridical) power, the interchangeability between the juridical realm and religion, the relationship between guilt and crime, and finally the relationship between life and shame. This study does not aim to compare The Four Books with The Trial. What will be argued instead is that while Yan relies on so-called Kafkian “inverse theology” (the representation of a world forsaken by God), he ultimately crafts a diegetic world which also clearly reflects the Chinese cultural heritage. The reference to both the Four Gospels and the Four Confucian Classics suggests that Yan is attempting to convey an idea of culture that conflates Chinese and Western values in order to create a literary work that can simultaneously reflect and transcend local boundaries.
