Wild Boar Crossing the River

★A historical fable woven with magnificent, splendid and bloody words★A winner of many Chinese literature awards including the Dream of the Red Chamber Award and the United Daily News Literary Award★A long epic masterpiece brewing for seventeen years by Zhang Guixing, a heavyweight writer of Malaysian Chinese literature▼Editor's recommendation◎Zhang Guixing is an important writer of contemporary Chinese literature. Wild Boar Crossing the River is his representative novel that marked his return to the literary world after a seventeen-year hiatus. It has been praised and recommended by many heavyweight writers: Gan Yaoming, Li Rui, Ha Jin, Yan Shuxia, Wu Xiaole, Dong Qichang, Lian Mingwei, Huang Jinshu and Luo Yijun, and has swept almost all Chinese literature awards.
◎The writing style of "Wild Boar Crossing the River" is strong, with dense and strange rhetoric to create a hot and fishy atmosphere in the tropical rainforest, and uses the primitive and vast exotic elements of the South Sea jungle: wild boars, crocodiles, monkeys, night owls, goshawks, hornbills, lizards, pythons, arrow poison trees, palm trees, coconut trees, and various folk ghost legends such as oil ghosts (naked sex ghosts), pontiana (flying human heads), mud monsters, parang knives, Japanese demon swords, indigenous headhunters, etc., which fully demonstrates the magical realism and rainforest writing.
"Wild Boar Crossing the River" tells the painful story of the Chinese in Southeast Asia who suffered humiliation and slaughter at the hands of the Japanese invaders during World War II, leading readers into that hellish, bloody and violent time and space. Among the herds of humans and beasts in the tropical jungle, we trace the unbearable memories of our ancestors.
On the eve of the Pacific War, the Chinese settlement of Zhuba Village in the British colony of Sarawak established the "Relief Committee for Refugees in the Motherland." The entire village, young and old, enthusiastically held a fundraising event for China's war against the Japanese. Love blossomed among the villagers, men and women, and they harbored a premonition of impending disaster. In December 1941, the Japanese invaded, and all those associated with the "Relief Committee for Refugees in the Motherland," including women and children, were brutally executed. During the three years and eight months of occupation, the distinction between human and animal blurred, life was easily lost in a variety of horrific and brutal ways, and lust and bestiality were nakedly displayed in the Nanyang rainforest.
▼Media Recommendation◎ Zhang Guixing's prose is calm and magnificent, blending complexity with conciseness. He effortlessly depicts bloody scenes of carnage, countering violence with violence, challenging readers' limits. He constructs his historical philosophy and aesthetic of violence, a tortuous journey between life and death, man and beast, good and evil. —With powerful writing and a grand vision, "The Wild Boar Crossing the River" has become another classic masterpiece of Chinese literature worldwide.
"The Wild Boar Crossing the River" is a near-full-throttle spectacle, featuring not just wild boars but also monkeys, crocodiles, porcupines, and even fireflies. The vast herd of wild boars competing for survival with humans on the desolate landscape—the battle between humans and pigs—is, if not the most spectacular in world literature, a unique spectacle in the history of Chinese fiction.
—Writer Huang Jinshu ◎ If Zhang Guixing uses pigs as a metaphor for humans, that's merely narrative sleight of hand. He doesn't intend to create a simple allegory. Heaven and earth are unkind, treating all things as "pigs and dogs." "Wild Boar Crossing the River" is terrifying to read because Zhang Guixing captures the animality that roams among us, a savage, nihilistic sense of equality among all animals. It's restless, ready to move, even to death.
—David Wang, Harvard University Lecturer ◎ In "Wild Boars Crossing," both invaders and rebels are completely transformed into beasts, slaughtering each other. The wild boars become humanized, and the humans become completely wild boarized. In the end, there are no heroes, only the dead and the survivors, and the survivors live a life worse than death. Killing is not only dishonorable, but also meaningless. In this sense, "Wild Boars Crossing" is anti-epic, that is, modern, and nihilistic. My call for its nihilism is not criticism, but rather to point out its contemporary significance.
—Writer Dong Qizhang ◎ In Zhang Guixing's writing, you can witness not only the wildness and magnificence of the tropical rainforest, but also the cruelty and bloodshed of so-called human civilization. On the ever-flowing Zhuba River, the paradise and purgatory of this shore are eternally swirling.
——Writer Li Rui◎ "Wild Boar Crossing the River" is a powerful and bizarre novel that integrates history, mythology and legend to present readers with a vibrant, real and magical world.
——Writer Ha Jin◎ "Wild Boar Crossing the River" is one of the top-notch Chinese-language works in recent years. It is like a double-concentrated coffee capsule. Readers are attracted by it and, in a short period of palpitations, taste the elegy for humanity written by the writer after more than ten years of dedication.
——Writer Wu Xiaole▼Award Records☆ First Prize of the 8th Dream of the Red Chamber Award☆ The 7th United Daily News Literary Award☆ 2019 Taiwan Literature Golden Classic Award☆ 15th Huazong Literary Award for Malaysian Chinese Literature☆ 2019 Taipei Book Fair Grand Prize for Novel☆ 2018 OPENBOOK Chinese Creation Book of the Year☆ 2018 Asia Weekly Top Ten Novels☆ 2018 Books.com.tw Annual Selection (Chinese Creation)
☆ The 43rd Golden Tripod Award for Literature Book

2021-01-01

四川人民出版社

Houlang, Houlang Literature

416

9787220119859