Sending Away Sorrow (New Edition)

A classic masterpiece of the Chinese literary world returns after 20 years!
Irreplaceable! Novelist Luo Yijun's monumental masterpiece, a groundbreaking masterpiece, highly praised by critic David Wang.


◆One of the Top Ten Books of the Year by China Times, and Kingstone Bookstore's Most Influential Book of the Year◆Reappearing/Returning to/Entering the Inner Core of the Novel and the Novelist◆Includes Huang Jinshu's "The Corpse of God: On the Aesthetics of Injury" by Luo Yijun

If I could do it again──
What happened to us survivors who continued to carry on in the years after you pressed the end button?


【Highlights】
"Sending Away Sorrow," written at the turn of the century, establishes the vastness of Luo Yijun's fictional universe. The story begins with the actions of a "body carrier," propelling the remains of his mother, the source of his life and the giver of his breath, through the city's boundaries. The vacuum between the living and the newly deceased cleverly evokes the role of storyteller, and the first, second, and third dreams that emerge in succession tell a story of time lag. "Something is misconnected"... If the mother is a designated messenger from a mysterious otherworld, then the "body carrier," his son, and his descendants, will receive the deceased's final message during the final leg of the body's journey.

The storyteller observes the death of another novelist, becoming a stranger left behind. Using writing as the ultimate act of respect, he expresses his feelings as a friend, a lover, and a close confidant. Nine letters unfold an intimate dialogue across dreams and realities. The irreversibility of death leaves ample scope for writing, creating a chasm between life and death. The title, "Sending Away Sorrow," is a reference to French writer Gide's mourning for his deceased wife. It's a self-mourning, but also a mourning for the passing of events. The remnants live on in the bodies of the living, like the memories of the deceased. The echoes of the dead never rise from the Styx, but the novelist offers a unique and incomparable expression of a life lived on.

Various fragments of life, fragments of narrative, amputated. These amputated fragments are no longer scattered and decay quietly on their own. If only I could—and such a time will never be repeated in my lifetime.

[Highly recommended]
Luo Yijun's writing represents a significant turning point in contemporary Chinese fiction. His narrative flows in a disorienting manner, yet often experiences involuntary convulsions and tremors. Yet, his countless words all point to an unspoken core. Is that core a place of fascination with desire, a void where time returns to zero? Or more likely, a stage for death's drag show? Waiting for disaster is like waiting for a tryst; deciphering death is like cracking a code. Amidst brutality and humor, sorrow and obscenity, Luo Yijun tells us another tale of 'the body carrier.'"
—David Wang, critic and Edward C. Henderson Professor of East Asian Languages ​​and Civilizations at Harvard University

"Hurt permeates the short stories of 'We Leave the Tavern in the Dark,' passes through the playful narrative of 'The Third Dancer' (perhaps inevitably injuring the author's own family and friends, who are stretched or flattened, kneaded into the novel's 'theater' as narrative material), transforms into the historical wound of 'The Last Name of the Moon,' and converges in 'Legacy of Sorrow'—in that writing space, the unexperienceable experience of death becomes a game of writing."
Huang Jinshu / Writer, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, National Chi Nan University

2023-02-04

麥田

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