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Geling Yan

Goodreads Author

Born

Shanghai, China

Website

http://www.yangeling.com

Genre

Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Thriller

Influences

Saul Bellow, Milan Kundera, Vladimir Nabokov, Flannery O'Connor, Romai ...more

Member Since

July 2021

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Geling Yan (嚴歌苓) is one of the most acclaimed novelists and screenwriters writing in the Chinese language today and a well-established writer in English. Born in Shanghai, she served with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) during the Cultural Revolution, starting at age twelve as a dancer in an entertainment troupe.

After serving for over a decade with the PLA (including tours in Tibet and as a war correspondent during the Sino-Vietnam border conflict), Ms. Yan was discharged with a rank equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel. She published her first novel in 1986 and ever since has produced a steady stream of novels, short stories, novellas, essays and scripts. Her best-known novels in English are The Secret Talker, published by HarperCollins; Li Geling Yan (嚴歌苓) is one of the most acclaimed novelists and screenwriters writing in the Chinese language today and a well-established writer in English. Born in Shanghai, she served with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) during the Cultural Revolution, starting at age twelve as a dancer in an entertainment troupe.

After serving for over a decade with the PLA (including tours in Tibet and as a war correspondent during the Sino-Vietnam border conflict), Ms. Yan was discharged with a rank equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel. She published her first novel in 1986 and ever since has produced a steady stream of novels, short stories, novellas, essays and scripts. Her best-known novels in English are The Secret Talker, published by HarperCollins; Little Aunt Crane published in the UK by Random House affiliate Harvill Secker; The Flowers of War, published in the U.S. by The Other Press and elsewhere by Random House's Harvill Secker; The Banquet Bug (The Uninvited in its UK edition - written directly in English); and The Lost Daughter of Happiness, (translated by Cathy Silber) both published by Hyperion in the US and Faber & Faber in the UK. She has also published a novella and short story collection called White Snake and Other Stories, translated by Lawrence A. Walker and published by Aunt Lute Books.

Many of Geling Yan's works have been adapted for film and television, including internationally distributed films Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (directed by Joan Chen) and Siao Yu (directed by Sylvia Chang; produced by Ang Lee). Chinese director Zhang Yimou made The Flowers of War, a big-budget film based on her work set during the 1937 Rape of Nanking, starring Academy Award winning actor Christian Bale; Coming Home 归来, based on her novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi 陆犯焉识, and One Second 一秒钟, also based on that novel.

Ms. Yan has also written numerous scripts based on her own and other authors' work, both in English and Chinese, including a script for a biopic on the iconic Peking opera star Mei Lanfang for director Chen Kaige (released as Forever Enthralled 梅兰芳) starring Leon Lai and Zhang Ziyi. She wrote the script for Dangerous Liaisons 危險關係, a Chinese-language film directed by South Korean director Hur Jin-ho and starring Zhang Ziyi, Jang Dong Gun and Cecilia Cheung. Her novel Fang Hua 芳华 is the basis a film of the same name (English title Youth) directed by Chinese director Feng Xiaogang 冯小刚. Her novel A City Called Macau 妈阁是座城 was made into a film directed by Li Shaohong 李少红, released in 2018.

Geling Yan a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and of France's Société des Gens de Lettres. She is affiliated with the Hollywood screenwriters' union, Writers' Guild of America, west, and is a former member of the Chinese Writers' Association (中国作家协会).

Geling Yan went to the United States at the end of 1989 for graduate study. She holds a Master's in Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from Columbia College, Chicago. To date she has published over 40 books in various editions in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the US, the UK and elsewhere; has won over 30 literary and film awards; and has had her work adapted or written scripts for numerous film, TV and radio works. Her works have been translated into twenty-one languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Uyghur, and Vietnamese, and her English-language novel The Banquet Bug/The Uninvited was translated into Chinese. She currently lives in Berlin, Germany.

She has been subject to an unofficial but effective ban in China since March 2020, when she wrote and promulgated an essay on the Chinese government's initial handling of COVID-19. Her future Chinese-language work will be published by her own publishing company, New Song Media GmbH.

For non-Chinese language publishing she is represented by Agence Astier-Pécher. ...more

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Geling Yan's Blog

Now published in Arabic

A short story of Yan Geling's has now been published in Arabic.

https://diffah.alaraby.co.uk/diffah//... Read more of this blog post »

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Published on July 11, 2021 06:36 • Tags: geling-yan, yan-geling

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Geling Yan’s books

Average rating: 3.55 · 7,320 ratings · 970 reviews · 83 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Secret Talker by Geling Yan (Goodreads Author), Jeremy Tiang (Translator) 3.08 avg rating — 3,115 ratings — published 2004 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Flowers of War 3.79 avg rating — 1,437 ratings — published 2007 — 53 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Lost Daughter of Happiness 3.58 avg rating — 520 ratings — published 1996 — 27 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	陆犯焉识 4.59 avg rating — 353 ratings — published 2011 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Little Aunt Crane 4.08 avg rating — 372 ratings — published 2008 — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Banquet Bug 3.36 avg rating — 412 ratings — published 2006 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	第九个寡妇 by Geling Yan (Goodreads Author), 严歌苓 4.21 avg rating — 217 ratings — published 2006 — 30 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	芳华 by Geling Yan (Goodreads Author), 严歌苓 4.04 avg rating — 180 ratings — published 2016 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	米拉蒂 4.62 avg rating — 104 ratings — published 2023 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	White Snake and Other Stories 4.20 avg rating — 89 ratings — published 1999 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Geling Yan rated a book it was amazing Finding Joy through Food: A Culinary Memoir, with Recipes by Ching Chiang	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Finding Joy through Food: A Culinary Memoir, with Recipes comes from an actor and dancer who, isolated during Covid, reinvented both herself and her relationship with food. Thus, this culinary memoir isn’t just a recipe collection with a few memories ...more
Nov 09, 2025 08:46AM · like · see review

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Quotes by Geling Yan (?)

“樂此不疲精神頭兒，給家裡添一盆植物，購置幾個瓷盤，都是她短時期的奮鬥目標。她和梁多是插隊”
― Geling Yan, 米拉蒂

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“老幹部的後代全部寄生在家，幾代人，相互比拼揩老爹的油，　吃老幹部不需肉票特供的肉，廚子做多少飯菜就下去多少飯菜，一個個還瞪著飢餓的眼。”
― Geling Yan, 米拉蒂

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“Her secrets weren’t kept just from other people but also from herself.”
― Geling Yan, The Secret Talker

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