Silent mountains

Peng Jianbin's latest collection of novels.
It describes the humble characters encountered in the wandering career of a salesman: their strong difficulties, confused struggles, meaningless yearnings, silent frustrations and endurance, and the young, confused love.
A heartwarming and heart-breaking "history of spiritual breakthrough" about a tiny individual.
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The eight short and medium-length novels collected in this book were mostly written by Peng Jianbin in the past two years. These stories primarily revolve around his career as a salesman from his early twenties to his thirties, with literature (reading and writing) and love as secondary themes. They depict the struggles and aspirations of young people entering society amidst adversity, their futile struggles in a foreign land both physical and spiritual, and their ultimate choice to endure in silence. In the author's writing, the hometown that holds childhood memories decays, while relatives, trapped in their fate, continue to wander in silence, toiling in despair. And then there are those insignificant lives struggling to make a living, their "souls weary, their futures bleak, yet their faces perpetually wear animalistic smiles"...
With a brutal sincerity and cool, detached language, the author salvages those ordinary yet precious lives from the emptiness of reality, endowing them with dignity within the world of literature. These works can also be seen as the author's spiritual autobiography, a heartwarming and heartbreaking "history of spiritual breakthrough" about the tiny individual that has survived in the cracks of the grand narratives of our time.
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Peng Jianbin's novels possess a contradictory duality: on the one hand, they resolutely confront the realities of life, while on the other, they are fleeting and ethereal, like scattered feathers on the night breeze or a solitary stone rolling down a hillside. Through the sharp contrast between the real and the imaginary, the author embodies a Kafkaesque stubbornness, loneliness, and emptiness, as well as a needle-sharp exploration and questioning of life.
——Award Speech for the 17th Dianchi Literature Award
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I have read Peng Jianbin's works that seem more bizarre, more outrageous and more talented, but the one that impressed me the most is still the article "Crystal" in the book. It is for those who are looking for crystals in loneliness and hardship, and for those Salinger-style, crystal-like teenagers who do not want chaos.
——Li Jingrui
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"Hope You're Healthy and Not Afraid" is such a wonderful piece! Only when two people meet would they take such painstaking effort to write a letter, a match made in heaven and yet come and go so effortlessly. In the age of WeChat, there will no longer be love letters like this.
—— Zeng Jiahui
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Peng Jianbin is the kind of author who, no matter what he writes, feels like writing his own spiritual autobiography. His self is not reflected in the content, but is very vividly reflected in the language, form and style.
——Hu Anyan
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I feel like no one has written about the lives of our generation so realistically. Many of Peng Jianbin's novels are works of art, transcending the typical autobiography. Perhaps his work can be understood as a satire and love of life itself, regardless of era or state.
——He Pan

2023-03-01

上海文艺出版社

Casting Culture, Single Reading

396

9787532183425