Dark night

Dark night

Adjusting different time scales, restoring ashes to fire. A collection of the early representative works of Huang Jinshu, a heavyweight in Malaysian Chinese literature and author of "Rain," a winner of the Peking University "World Chinese Literature Award." ※Introduction※
"Dark Night" is a collection of two early short story collections by Huang Jinshu. The stories are primarily set in the rubber plantation towns of Southeast Asia: the Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia face a landscape of wild beasts, racial oppression, colonial invasion, and identity anxiety, facing various forms of dispersal, disappearance, and death. Huang Jinshu actively employs metafiction, satire, and collage to engage in dialogue with the deep-seated ills of history, presenting Malaysian Chinese literature and the plight of Malaysian Chinese in an enchanted manner. Behind each of these dark texts lies the author's attempt to repair and reconstruct the erosion of ethnic memory, as well as his reflection and contemplation on the collective fate of the Chinese in Southeast Asia.
※Editor's Recommendation※
Dark Night is a collection of short stories from Huang Jinshu's two debut works, marking the first complete collection of Huang Jinshu's early works to be introduced to mainland China. It includes award-winning works such as "The Rainy Town," "The Storyteller," "M's Disappearance," and "Fish Skeleton."
In these twenty-one weighty works, readers can experience descriptions of tropical, rural landscapes, the suspenseful atmosphere of a thriller, and the impression of a remote town drenched in the relentless patter of sweltering rain. Huang Jinshu vividly captures the deepest and most complex emotions one feels for home and one's hometown.
The author weaves the weight of Nanyang's history across multiple novels, not simply as a setting, but through this medium, he aims to reinterpret gradually forgotten histories, defying mainstream interpretations and the deliberate oblivion of certain stories. Huang Jinshu doesn't employ traditional realistic writing to depict a single event: his scenes are fragmented, and his characters' emotions and memories are shattered. As Malaysian Chinese literature scholar Zhang Jingyun notes, "He employs a new narrative art form—a novel that doesn't resemble a novel—to construct a 'fictional reality' that is free of hegemonic and authoritarian discourse."
Throughout Huang Jinshu's novels, questions like "How can Malaysian Chinese literature be established?" and "The absence of classic Malaysian Chinese literature" recur frequently as underlying themes. Over twenty years ago, he sharply criticized the decadence of Malaysian Chinese literature at the time, prompting renowned literary scholar Wang Dewei to describe him as the "bad boy" of Chinese literature and the "Mora of Nanyang" (Lu Xun's phrase, "Mora spirit" refers to the rebellious spirit that dares to resist traditional oppression). These profound questions about Chinese literature, acting as a mirror, can spark profound reflection on the current state of local literature, prompting reflection on the past and a quest for the future.
☆Specially includes the 2017 new preface, two prefaces to the first edition, and commentary articles by Zhang Huisi, Yang Zhao, Zhang Jinzhong, and Zhang Guixing.
※Recommended by celebrities※
Huang Jinshu recounts his hometown's events, combing through the scars of history, the pioneering experiences of his ancestors, the bloodshed and tears of the Japanese army's devastation of Malayan Chinese villages ("Sex Nightmare" and "The Storyteller"), the rise and fall of the Malayan Communist Party ("Fish Skeletons"), and the security terror wrought by illegal Indonesian immigrants in the 1980s ("Illegal Immigrants"). These are all the material he draws from. The rubber plantation towns have always been the starting point for his writing. The damp, cloying atmosphere, the simple, unpretentious characters, the sinister and haunting atmosphere, the constant simmering menace. Huang Jinshu is melancholic, yet he "must write."
——Harvard University Professor Wang Dewei Even if “we” don’t understand the difficult and obscure “scene of history” of the 20th century that hurts the historical clock and the archaeological stratigraphy of the dispersed people accumulated in the hearts of “Mahua”, we can still “return to the soul” and read it in a “Liaozhai”, Faulkner “Southern” and Marquez “One Hundred Years of Solitude” way: a kind of strange history and riverless flow, ghostly shadows, and a large matrix of symbols flashing and complex, mythological squeezing and carnival.
—Writer Luo Yijun It's difficult for Taiwanese readers to understand the awkward contradictions of a Malaysian Chinese raised in Mandarin, the heartbreak and bloodshed of maintaining or even severing the umbilical cord that nourishes them from the Chinese mother tongue. To say that Jinshu's work merely offers this kind of experience is an oversimplification. Jinshu's greatest strength lies in its numerous traps, making it easy to misread, like stepping into a virgin forest.
The novels of writers Zhang Guixing and Huang Jinshu frequently feature plots of "possession," where the authors, possessed by some mysterious force, create works that appear familiar yet strange. We can view their own novels as products of the heavy, phantom enchantment of literary history. This strong awareness of literary history imbues their works with a mastery of technique, a clear creative motivation, and a depth of text open to diverse interpretations, unlike the work of other newcomers.
The writer Yang Zhao's brilliance lies in his ability to defy the efforts of the older generation of Malaysian Chinese literary realists, offering a guiding light to his fellow writers and readers. The novels in this book emphasize, rather, the reawakening of suppressed or lost ethnic memories, much like the narrator in "Blood Catastrophe" conducting field research on "Malaysian History," evoking the spirits of the deceased. This reawakening highlights the impossibility of representation and its political significance. Through their fictional writing, literary scholars Zhang Jinzhong and Huang Jinshu have meticulously connected Malaysian Chinese literature with modern and contemporary literature, and even world literature. For example, several of these novels clearly bear the hallmarks of Marquez, with familiar symbols recurring: disappearance, dissipation, the dampness of one's hometown in dreams, and ants on manuscripts.
——Zhang Huisi, Senior Lecturer, Department of Chinese Studies, University of Malaya ※Award Record※
☆The 7th United Literature Novel Newcomer Award Short Story Recommendation Award ("Rainy Town")
☆First Place in the Second Hakka Federation Novel Award (Zheng Zengshou)
☆17th United Daily News Literary Award for Outstanding Short Story ("The Storyteller")
☆National Taiwan University Literature Award, second place in novel ("Sorrowful Death")
☆The 3rd Rural Youth Novel Award Special Award ("M's Disappearance")
☆The 6th Malaysian Literature Award for Taiwan: Novel Award (The Big File)
☆ Winner of the first "Young Lions Literature and Art" "World Chinese Coming-of-Age Novel Award" ("Taira")
☆18th Times Literary Award Short Story First Prize (Fish Skeleton)
☆The 14th Hong Xingfu Novel Award (Fish Skeleton)

2020-01-01

后浪 | 上海文艺出版社

the new wave

480

9787532174003