Good Book of the Year: Fiction 丨 Culture Original List Books

◎ "Wencheng", by Yu Hua, Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House, March 2021

This is a tragedy of "living" and "dead" intertwining and colliding, both in terms of story structure and character shaping are different from Yu Hua's previous works, legendary, romantic, epic and tragic to build a full readable effect of the novel, at the same time, the tension of the theme connotation of his work is also greatly increased, and the human nature of the turbulent era constitutes the profound ideological connotation of the work, reaching the real people's hearts. The work adopts the ingenious structure of "main part" and "supplementary part", which fully expands the artistic tension of the novel's suspense.

As an epic grand narrative, Yu Hua has left us with a huge suspense of time and space, story and characters, and the vigorous, life-and-death romance story does not seem to have an ending. (Ding Fan)

◎ "A Knife, a Thousand Words", by Wang Anyi, People's Literature Publishing House, April 2021

The moon reflects the bamboo into a thousand words, and the sea of thousands of people hides a knife. The narrative of the sea family is Wang Anyi's signature skill. Wang An recalled this new book", "A Knife, a Thousand Words", and expanded the space to the other side of the ocean. The novel begins with a famous chef of Huaiyang cuisine hidden in the Chinese quarter of Flushing, New York, laying out the sadness and joy of the old and new eras, and the Phenom snow mud connects Shanghai, Northeast China and overseas. A dining table casts the magic of change, various diners bloom different fireworks, the floating fate of the characters, and the subtle charm of the times, as if out of it, all in it. The famous chef knife work is exquisite, the story is delicious and feasting, all of which are the strength and taste of Wang Anyi's words. Do you have an old pen, strong and poor? Flushing is an old Shanghainese cultural enclave, the story is still the foundation of the legend, still the Jiangnan atmosphere splendid and trivial language, but in addition to the daily poetry, there is an additional layer of Zen to see the mountains is to see the mountains and the water is the water. Behind the novel, there is still an indisputable question of revolution and enlightenment, which is the lingering complex of this generation of writers and the author's personal "self-grasping". in Wadang

◎ "One Day and Three Autumns", by Liu Zhenyun, Huacheng Publishing House, July 2021

"One Day and Three Autumns" can be said to be Liu Zhenyun's "Yanjin version" of "Dream of the Red Chamber". Although the beginning of the pen began with the painting of the sixth uncle, and the painting of the sixth uncle has been extinguished - when the fake is true, it is true and false, there is nowhere to do anything, and the sixth uncle is the immortal Daoist who knows the world. Liu Zhenyun belongs to the kind of writer who only writes one big book in his lifetime, and this big book has a theme: hometown and destiny. In his long new work, cold jokes and great humor coexist, outside the painting, outside the play, the underworld, the hometown, each other cause and effect, each other,at the same time contradictory, two cancel out -- it turns out that this is our life, after tasting the bitterness of life, the understanding of the rationality of life, one day is three autumns, one day is three autumns, one day in exchange for three autumns. Liu Zhenyun wrote about human nature, land and destiny in reality and imagination, which is both humor and irony; it is both magic and reality. (Lu Mei)

◎ "Echoes", East and West, People's Literature Publishing House, June 2021

Things always have the ability to discern and tell the secrets of human nature. At the beginning of Echoes, when the murder occurs, the human experiment with different characters begins. In this line of the case, although Ran Dongdong's thinking was meticulous and his steps were frightening, allowing the murderer to manifest and be arrested, she suddenly found that according to the evidence obtained now, all the parties could find a reason for exoneration. Ran Dongdong was unwilling, and finally she found a breakthrough in Xu Shanchuan's wife, Shen Xiaoying, and the truth was finally revealed. The case is far more complex than we think, and human nature is darker than we think. The other is the emotional line, but every fission of the feelings of the couple of Ran Dongdong and Mu Dafu eventually goes to the opposite side of their own hopes, perhaps this is the narrative focus of "Echo": under the seemingly orderly and beautiful life world, there is also an unfathomable psychological world, which cannot help but ask, dig deep, and force the eyes, because in everyone's psychological world, there are chaotic, gloomy and obscure corners, and the emergence of every decisive moment makes humanity deviate from an inherent track. And some human weaknesses directly lead people to the abyss of sin. "Echo" writes about the abyss of daily life, but also writes about the darkness and fission of the psychological world, at the same time, he also measures the bottom line of human nature and recasts the belief in love through the awakening and guilt generated by the self-knowledge. (Xie Youshun)

◎ "Night God", by Sun Yisheng, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, September 2021

A stalwart novelist who appears with a signal. It is said to be a "collection of CaoXian stories", but the author's style is "to the story". Claude Simon says that the trend in literary development is that depiction takes the high place of the plot. Sun Yisheng, whether consciously or secretly, walked on Simon's path. In Sun's novels there are Chekhov and Faulkner, no Stephen King and suspense. (A B)

Nominees: Ah Yi, Ding Fan, Gao Gao, Geng Zhanchun, He Ping, Hu Xuewen, Huang Dehai, Kong Lingyan, Li Ximin, Li Xiuwen, Liao Weitang, Lin Peiyuan, Lu Yiping, Lu Mei, Liu Xiaobo, Convex Concave, Wadang, Wang Zheng, Wang Xiangfu, Xie Youshun, Yi Zhou, Yu Jian, Zhang Dinghao, Zhao Yu, Zhu Shanpo, Zhao Yuebin. (In no particular order)