But then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a Western sensibility. To a Western sensibility, the broad strokes of Yan Lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. A bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases Mao Zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the Chairman’s precepts too literally. “Serve the People!,” smoothly translated by Julia Lovell, offers an initial sample of Yan Lianke’s writing to an English-speaking audience.

Called “The Dream of Ding Village,” it is reportedly a science-fictiony satire in which opportunists export the blood of peasants by pipeline, as if it were oil.

A Chinese edition of his most recent novel, which takes place in his native province of Henan, was banned once the authorities understood the subversiveness of its subject. His first book, “Xia Riluo,” described in a Washington Post author profile as a send-up of two People’s Army war heroes gone bad, was banned. And although he admits to censoring himself to avoid censorship by others, this pre-emptive step hasn’t always been enough. Yan Lianke has won two of China’s top literary prizes for previous novels, but he has also been censured for writing books that annoyed the Party hierarchy. It’s a challenging job description: cautious troublemaker. Yan Lianke has spent much of his adult life refining the highly rarefied, not especially transferable skill of being a provocateur who knows how far he can go without having his quill snapped. Publishing overly frank air pollution charts? Leaking hints on Olympic gymnasts’ floor routines? Indulging in too much of the wrong kind of self-criticism? Too much lead in the ink or too much lead in the pencil that is, excessive lewdness? Seeing this legend on the dust jacket of Yan Lianke’s faux-naif novel, “Serve the People!” the first of his books to be translated into English you have to wonder what Chinese officials are banning books for these days. You can’t get better publicity for a book than “Banned in Boston.” But as product endorsements go, “Banned in China” sends a more mixed message, even if it still wins points for piquancy.

Dream of ding village review