On the afternoon of January 24, the 2022 Annual Literary Forum and Awards Ceremony of Contemporary, sponsored by the People's Literature Publishing House and Contemporary Magazine, was held in Beijing, revealing and awarding the overall champion of the 2021 Novel Five and the Contemporary Literary Rally.
Forum site
Announced at the event, Wang Anyi's "A Knife, A Thousand Words", Liu Zhenyun's "One Day and Three Autumns", Dongxi's "Echoes", Yu Hua's "Wencheng", and Luo Weizhang's "Who Is Knocking on the Door" won the "Contemporary" Long Story Forum's 2021 Annual Long Story Top Five.
Yu Hua "Wencheng"
Wang Anyi," A Knife, A Thousand Words
The five winning works have their own advantages. There are works that continue the author's consistent creative style, such as Wang Anyi's "A Knife, a Thousand Words". Wang Anyi's long-form work for more than thirty years since 1986 runs through a general theme, that is, the change of history. The novel deals with Harbin, Yangzhou, and Shanghai, spanning the north and south of China, and later across the ocean to the United States. The protagonist moves through a vast historical geographical area and presents the fate of the characters in the midst of great changes to the reader.
Liu Zhenyun's "One Day and Three Autumns" still focuses on the interesting homework of small people, but adds a lot of surrealism to the story through the intervention of legendary characters and supernatural characters. The protagonists have a sense of déjà vu, and their hopes, pursuits, dreams and destinations are enough to resonate with many readers, but the philosophy of discerning and forgetting words gives the story a lot of space worthy of swimming.
Liu Zhenyun's acceptance speech
The "Echoes" of The East and West is written in a new way, using the form of reasoning to care for daily life, leading readers to dive into the deep sea of the times, exploring "who I am", "who is my love", "what is wrong with my emotions", and so on. Yu Hua is one of the writers most familiar to readers, and his "Wencheng" is full of "Yuhua-style" style in terms of story, characters, language and tone: exquisite novel structure, simple lines but characters with distinct characters, and small characters who do not succumb in the big history and impermanent fate. Luo Weizhang's "Who's Knocking on the Door" revolves around a group of children from celebrating their father's birthday and treating their illness to holding a funeral, interpreting the endless lives of generations.
Luo Weizhang's acceptance speech
According to reports, the 18th "Contemporary" Novel Annual Forum, on the basis of the existing links such as preliminary evaluation and recommendation, reader online voting, and expert review, in order to make the selection results more representative, invited more than 70 critics, writers, editors-in-chief of publications and media representatives from various provinces and cities across the country to conduct online voting. Finally, the opinions of the reader online voting, expert online voting and review committee were summarized, and the top five works of the 2021 long story were selected.
At the forum site, Yan Jingming, vice chairman of the China Writers Association, made a review of the overall situation of domestic novels in 2021, focusing on the strengthening of story dynamics and the allegorization of hometowns. Cheng Guangwei, professor of the School of Literature of Chinese Min University, Hu Ping, deputy director of the Novel Committee of the China Writers Association, Zhang Li, professor of the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University, Yang Qingxiang, vice dean of the School of Literature of Chinese Min University, and He Shaojun, vice president of the Chinese Contemporary Literature Research Association, and five other famous critics unveiled and commented on the five best works of the 2021 long story one by one.
Another element of the event was the announcement of the overall winner of the 23rd Contemporary Literary Rally. The award is voted by the readers of Contemporary Magazine through online and offline channels, and the winner of the highest vote in each issue is the champion of the rally sub-station, and at the end of the year, the annual champion of each individual event is selected according to the reader's vote. Ge Fei, vice chairman of the China Writers Association, Liu Qingbang, the representative of the previous rally champion, Li Hongqiang, editor-in-chief of the People's Literature Publishing House, and Kong Lingyan, deputy editor-in-chief, announced the winners of the 2021 rally at the event site.
Fan Wen's "Sun Turns" won the "Annual Novel Champion", Feng Jicai's "Danube River Gorge" won the "Annual Novel and Short Story Championship", Zhu Yong's "Forbidden City Cultural Relics Moving South" won the "Annual Documentary Works Overall Champion", "'Centenary of the Founding of the Party' Tribute Works" awarded Tie Liu's long documentary literature "Backing Mountain" and American scholar Bi Sen and Li Yan's translation of "1937, Yan'an Dialogue", and Sun Rui won the "Annual Young Writer".
Writer Feng Jicai sent an acceptance speech from Tianjin: "The first short story of my writing career, "Carved Pipe", was published in the magazine "Contemporary" that had just been launched that year. Today, Contemporary has given me an important literary prize for a novel I recently wrote. That's a full forty years in between. I went from black hair to two sideburns. The only thing that has not changed is the pen that has always been in his hand. Because there is my conscience in the pen tube. ”
Contemporary is a large-scale original literary journal under the China Publishing Group, sponsored by the People's Literature Publishing House. Over the past 40 years since its inception, it has published many important literary works, and nine novels such as "Furong Town", "Bell and Drum Tower", "White Deer Plain", "Dust Settled" and "Dark Calculation" have won the Mao Dun Literature Award. Contemporary magazine launched a long-form anthology in 2004 to select the most recently published and published novels.