Recently, writer Ai Wei's two masterpieces of novels, "Comrade Lover" and "Lover Guilty", were published by Zhejiang Literature and Art · KEY-Can Culture Launch, two works in the "Lover" series go deep into the elusive depths of human nature, explore the hidden emotions between the sexes, and write deep memories from the 1980s, both of which are classics that Ai Wei has transcended the times.
Ai Wei is good at describing the psychology of characters and is known as a "human nature explorer". His novels have both a "realistic" side and an "allegorical" level. He described himself as a believer in Kafka, and he once said: "My ideal novel is a novel that combines the inner depth of human nature with a wide range of metaphors, it is honest and introspective, he starts from the most ordinary daily life, but has the ability to fly away from reality, he is self-sufficient, he has unexpected wisdom." He will eventually come back and stab like a knife into the heart of reality or the world. ”
"Comrade Lover", by Ai Wei, Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House· KEY-Can Culture, January 2022, $62 (Hardcover)
"Comrade Lover" is such a masterpiece with both depth and extensive metaphorical digging into human nature. The protagonist of the novel, Liu Yajun, is a scout who has made many achievements in battle, was injured and disabled during a mission, and can only spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. After the war, a female student named Zhang Xiaoying fell in love with him and married him, because of this legendary marriage, they were widely reported by the media and invited to participate in various social activities. However, with the change of the times, this high-profile marriage has gradually faded from its former glory. The tightness of life and the imbalance of identity have caused the "war" to shift between the sexes and intensify...
This work not only fully expresses the individual's emotions and desires, dignity, inferiority and weakness, but also goes deep into the social environment and the background of the times at that time, presenting the helpless situation of people in the change of the times. What is written in the book is not only the tragedy of the lives of two people, but also the difficult journey of a generation to find self-worth. Scholar and critic Zhang Qinghua commented: "With this novel alone, Ai Wei should be written into the history of literature, and he has reached a spiritual and psychological depth that contemporary writers have never reached." ”
If Ai Wei's "Lover" series, "Comrade Lover", is "a novel text that touches the intricacies between the times and the individual, politics and human nature, and the novel shows us that we are the experience and pain, desire and struggle of an individual life in the midst of the change of the times and the dislocation of history", then the second part of this series, "Lovers are Guilty", is an excellent novel text that shows us the poignant and infinite under the shroud of "original sin".
"Lovers are Guilty", by Ai Wei, Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House· KEY-Can Culture, January 2022, $69 (Hardcover)
The time span of "Lover Guilty" is from the 1980s to the 1990s, which can be described as a love legend spanning ten years, a sadomasochistic love story, and can also be said to be a person's spiritual growth and atonement journey. The protagonist of the story is named Yu Zhili, a small city beauty who lives a peaceful life, but her life suddenly rises in waves. One night she was raped while walking home, which she believed was the work of a man who had been stalking her for a long time. The man was sentenced to prison for eight painful years. However, during these eight years, Yu Zhili also suffered deeply, partly because of the trauma of rape in that conservative era, and another deeper reason was that she accidentally discovered that the criminal was someone else. As a victim, she also wronged another innocent person, which is a cruel joke that fate has made for the two of them. Eight years later, the prisoner was finally released from prison, and he began to follow Yu Zhili with hatred until the two finally met.
The highlight of the novel is placed after the two meet, but the story does not move towards a simple revenge plot, but more realistically shows the entanglement and complexity of human nature. This hatred begins with misplaced love, and seeing each other is the moment when hatred erupts, but it also ignites the repressed fire of love, and the two souls who are torn by holes begin to seek their own salvation in each other's desires.
In "The Guilt of a Loved One", Ai Wei explores whether Chinese have a sense of "sin" and how to solve this "sin" problem, but he does not attribute this problem to religion, but focuses on the richness of human beings. The questions interrogated in the book are precisely the basic questions that Lu Xun and the great Russian writer Dostoevsky dealt with.
It is reported that after the launch of the two novels of "Comrade Lover" and "Lover Guilty", KEY-can Culture will also launch Ai Wei's novels "Cross Country Race", "Wind and Sunshine", "Midsummer", "South", etc. in the new year, as well as the short story "The Whole Universe is Talking to Me" and so on. Ai Wei's latest feature-length masterpiece "In the Mirror" will also be released in the first quarter of 2022.
Nandu reporter Zhu Rongting intern Tan Wanying