Injury-free era

✨ Editor's Pick☆ Tong Wei-ge is one of the most iconic Taiwanese novelists born in the 1970s, having won numerous awards, including the Taiwan Literature Golden Classic Award and the United Daily News Literary Award. His writing reveals a variety of styles, including magical realism, modernism, and introverted generationalism. Yet, a single word defies description. Luo Yi-jun once said, "Tong Wei-ge's terrifying power lies in his ability to explain everyone else, while no one can explain him."
"The Injury-Free Era" is Tong Weiguo's debut novel, showcasing the author's breakthrough from short stories to full-length novels. It is also Tong Weiguo's second published work, and many subtle traces of his first novel emerge more fully in "The Injury-Free Era," foreshadowing the outlines of his third work. Zhang Yaoren calls this novel "a necessary transitional book," and "The Injury-Free Era" holds a special place in Tong Weiguo's creative journey.
☆ In Tong Weiguo's novels, people and things are often scarred, and "The Injury-Free Era" is the most prominent: the protagonist is a disabled person, the protagonist's mother is ill, and the mountain village where they live seems to be abandoned. Large-scale injuries, disuse and decay are all over the text. "The Injury-Free Era" is like a scarred book of mourning, and as Lin Junying said, it forms a kind of "aesthetics of abandonment". Tong Weiguo "uses novel writing to rub out that even abandonment has its own divine light."
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✨Celebrity Recommendation☆ Tong Weige uses a torrent of "corrupt descriptions" to lay out a set of values: "useless people" are "harmless and harmless." "Useless people" cannot harm or hinder the world in any way because they do not exist in this world. Their "useless" identity is determined by the freedom they have in their own imaginary world.
——Taiwanese writer Yang Zhao☆ Tong Weiguo seems to be rebuilding a slow-motion theater of hurt in the style of Pinter's "Then and Now" and "Back to the Hometown"... The past time becomes an infinite microcosm of "the god of small things", and all the leisurely, confused, and kind little people slowly go through the moments of destroying their fate. Only the author can stop the picture at will to examine the confrontation of light violence, or a prophetic feeling of such waste and ignorance of the impending disaster in the future.
—Taiwanese novelist Luo Yijun☆ The idea of ​​writing "useless"—a lost battle before it's even begun—is perhaps deeply at odds with not only the current trend but also so-called universal values. Tong's rebellion, after all, has its own melancholy. Perhaps, through his writing, he's demonstrating that even "useless" writing possesses its own divine light. Within such quiet words lies the profound admiration of a human being who has a slight chance of upward mobility. The insect-like lives of parents and grandparents are brought to life through Jiang's use of words.
—Taiwanese writer Lin Junying
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✨Award record☆ The author has won many awards including the "Taipei Literature Award", "United Daily News Literature Award", and "Taiwan Literature Award for Books and Novels Gold Classic Award".
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Perhaps it's an era that defies precise labeling, only discernible in a coastal mountain village are the figures of a mother and son. The son, abandoned, clings to the memory of all that's left; the mother, stricken with illness, strives relentlessly to break free. The two, each in solitary conversation or in dialogue, recount past events or conjure up stories. Their words unfold, stretching time, once fleeting, into eternity, allowing countless "traumatic" events to unfold freely, permeating that once-beautiful time.

2019-09-01

四川人民出版社

Houlang, Houlang Literature

224

9787220113949