Diogenes Variations

The Diogenes Variations

Won the "Weekly Bunshun Top Ten Mysteries" and "Top Ten Honkaku Mysteries" of Japan for the first time
Chen Haoji is a Chinese-language writer who has won two titles on overseas charts and has published a collection of short stories over the past ten years.
17 stories, accompanied by multiple variations of classical BGM,
A crazy spiral that you can't stop reading.
The intense pleasure of not wanting to miss a single word!
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☠️Editor's Choice☆ This short story collection is full of unexpected twists and turns, spanning mystery, horror, fantasy, science fiction, and fairy tales, with settings spanning Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, the US, and even outer space. Chan Ho-kei's constant shifts, interspersed with narrative twists and turns, delivers a rollercoaster reading experience. The ever-changing creative style (and immeasurable imagination) of this Chinese language prodigy is fully revealed here.
☆ Chen Haoji carefully selects classical background music and combines it with the music of the novel suite. In the darkness of the Internet, Chopin's "Twenty-four Preludes" No. 4 in E minor slowly sounds; a love murder case nestled in the corner of the park on New Year's Eve is played with the warmth and horror of Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" No. 18; 14 classical music pieces create a unique sensory experience.
☆ Unmissable heavyweight works and creative secrets for mystery fans, including "The Blue of Blue," which Chen Haoji considers a "turning point" in his creative career, and "The Invisible X," praised by Taiwanese writer Lin Siyan as "definitely one of the top ten Chinese-language mystery short stories." Also included is a detailed 6,000-word postscript, offering a glimpse into Chen Haoji's creative journey.
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☠️Content Introduction
Seventeen short stories unfold the world of Chan Ho-kei's imagination. There's the unforeseen: a young man aspiring to be a writer plots a crime in broad daylight, simply because his editor tells him, "If you want to debut, kill someone first!" There's also the unconventional: a man wakes up and craves coffee, only to discover it's banned. Even more shocking, children smoking is legal! Or, more ordinary: a professor launches a mystery game in class, offering an A for anyone who finds the hidden teaching assistant! ... A diverse collection of narratives (mystery, horror, science fiction, fantasy, fairy tales) meets social issues (smoking bans, incitement, online privacy) in a collection of endlessly surprising and fantastical stories that are both absurd and completely convincing.
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☠️Celebrity Recommendation☆ The ingenuity of Chen Haoji's writing is largely evident in his short and medium-length works, and "Diogenes Variations" is a prime example. This collection brings together seventeen of Chen's short and medium-length stories, spanning diverse styles and genres. Among them, "Spying on the Blue" and "Invisible X" are considered classics of Chinese short mystery fiction.
—Lin Siyan (Taiwanese mystery novelist)
☆ Chen Haoji is proficient in various sub-genres of "mystery". Some of these short stories are packaged with science fiction or fantasy settings, but still have a solid reasoning core, rich imagination, varied content, and are quite interesting.
——Wofu (Taiwanese mystery novelist)
"Diogenes Variations" isn't a chronicle of a journey from youth to sophistication, nor is it a compilation of a decade's worth of accomplishments. I'd approach it from a biological perspective, like a branching evolutionary tree—there's no hierarchy, but there's definitely a sequence of arrivals and processes of self-transformation. Readers can, of course, read each chapter at their leisure, simply enjoying the fun and entertainment of the stories. However, if you've enjoyed Chen Haoji's past novels like "13.67," "Forgotten Police," and "Insider," you might, like me, take a more comprehensive view of his various works and feel their endless creativity and impact.
——Dong Yang (Taiwanese mystery critic)
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☠️Award record☆ The Japanese version of "Diogenes Variations" won the 7th place in the overseas department of "Weekly Bunshun's Top Ten Mystery Novels" in 2019 and the 3rd place in the overseas department of Hayakawa Shobo's "I want to read this mystery novel!" in 2020.
☆ "The Blue of Blue" was shortlisted for the 2009 "Taiwan Mystery Writers Association Essay Contest Award".
☆ "Time is Money" won the third prize of the 2010 "Ni Kuang Science Fiction Award".

2022-12-01

花城出版社

Houlang, Houlang Literature

304

9787536097643