The cloud also retreats/texts
No.10
"Afterlife"
Abdulrazak Gulna/by Li Heqing/Translated by Shanghai Translation Publishing House, August 2022
Gulna has a bit of a Pamuk, and it is unlikely that he wants to see a vast East African landscape in his pen. The native Tanzanians in the novel are also like Gulner himself, love to read and love, Hamza knows German since childhood, after joining the German army, he was accepted as a male favorite by gay superiors, but he also got a book by Schiller, he immersed himself in reading appeared many times, so although he was penniless after being discharged from the army, he could also win the respect and protection of those who were literate and reasonable, and gradually lived a peaceful and well-off life, and then he began to read Heine's books again, which was also widely treated. It seems that people who love to read will not have too bad luck.
"The Afterlife" and 1994's "Paradise" form a continuum, "Paradise" follows the German Ilias, and in "The Afterlife" he finds Hamza, his long-lost brother, but the story ends in a kind of "catch-up" narrative like a documentary script, how someone is in a certain year, and so on, which is confusing to the novelist's thinking.
"The Afterlife" writes about the suppression of the indigenous uprising in Tanganyika by the German army in 1907, and the killing of their compatriots by the indigenous people hired by the German army, but Gulner attaches the most importance to the most "mild" conflict in the whole matter, that is, the anxiety of those Tanzanians who have been educated by German culture when they return to their native life. The Hamza family in "Afterlife" seems to be living in a Western-style system, and the main local and "backward" factor is the kind of exorcism ritual that is common to all ethnic groups and performed for the purpose of healing.
No.9 "Autonomy: Marriage, Law and Women's Identity in the Chinese Revolution (1940-1960)"
Cong Xiaoping/Authored and translated by Social Sciences Academic Press, March 2022
In the sixties and seventies of the 20th century, when the feminist movement in the United States was at its climax, feminist leaders turned to China as a reference object, and in their opinion, China was one of the few societies that did the best job of equality between men and women, and as early as the Jiangxi Soviet, the Chinese Communist Party was promoting the process of unshackling women from traditional society. The book "Autonomy" studies the origin of this impression: how women's status in marriage and family relations has changed before and after the establishment of New China, what forces have driven this change, and what generation has been created.
The examination of "freedom", "autonomy", and "autonomy" is the essence of the book, and Ma Xi's five justices, an important event in the history of modern Chinese law, are discussed in a special chapter in the book, because it deals with the question of how the new state can reform the old marriage customs. The establishment of the female image in the literary and artistic work "Liu Qiaoer" is the most worthwhile content in the book. The writing style of the whole book has the cautious style that is common in modern Chinese social history writing, and in many places the author does not explicitly say it, waiting for readers to think about it themselves.
No.8
"Final Story"
(Ireland) William Trevor / by Yang Lingfeng / Translation 99 Reader, People's Literature Publishing House March 2022
As the title suggests, the stories included in this collection all have an "ending" flavor, of course, Trevor, who is a master of fiction, will leave enough space for readers to linger in the atmosphere after the last word is settled. Reading Trevor, you can't expect an end to the story: there is an explanation for what happened to the protagonist, or the protagonist finally makes a major decision after hesitating for a long time... And can only stick to their words and actions, often follow in a blank mind. Often at the beginning of a story, we expect to see some irreparable loss, but when we are finished, we understand that even this expectation should not exist, because it is difficult to distinguish ourselves from the people in the story: the words and actions of those people are narrated by Trevor and become the verdict of their lives.
No.7 Iron and Blood: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire (1871-1918)
Katya Hoyer/by Xu Yitong/Translation of Xinsi Culture CITIC Publishing Group February 2022
The story of Wilhelm I, who lived to 91, and Bismarck, who lived until 83, joined forces to build a unified German empire in a conflicting partnership, and the story begins in the 1860s. In those decade, the United States fought a brutal civil war, Italy entered the process of unification, and the German Empire was proclaimed after defeating its archenemy France, which decisively changed the power map of Europe and the future of the world. Bismarck was a political genius who knew that Germany was born in blood and fire lacked legitimacy, and after being forced to retire, the position of the German emperor was even more inflated, and the emperor did his best to have an independent state and a strong navy at the same time, like England. His insecurity also led to Germany's eventual emergence as Europe's number one variable.
There is no shortage of people writing about modern German history, and the biggest advantage of Hoyer's work is, of course, that it is short and concise, and it is not boring. She tells readers that establishing a straight line between the "iron-blooded" Bismarck and the more "iron-blooded" Hitler is too rudimentary. The empire that Bismarck single-handedly promoted was respected even by the French, because the regime of Napoleon III was so unpopular, and because Germany showed many virtues such as unity, maturity, responsibility, etc., and these qualities are preserved by Hoyer today's Germany.
No.6 "The Psychology of Lying: What Interesting Thoughts About Human Lies"
Ian Leslie/by Zhang Wei/Translated by Chinese Min University Press, December 2021
"Honesty is what we strive for", "force and deception in war", "how to distinguish truth from falsehood in speech", "how to teach children not to lie", "how to treat lying children" ... From the subheadings of the chapters, this book seems to be a simple "psychology manual", but in fact its content is quite solid and brilliant. For example, when talking about children's lying, the author gives the example of "Snow White": adults love to talk about "Snow White", but three- and four-year-old children do not necessarily like to listen to it, because children do not understand, why do we all know that the evil stepmother pretended to be an old woman, and Snow White still opened the door for her? From this phenomenon, he talks about when children form cognitions of "other people's thoughts", which is directly related to the consciousness of lying. For another example, when referring to "fictional disorder," the author not only distinguishes it from the conventional impression of "lying," but also points out that the symptom "reveals a steady stream of creativity in our brains."
After reading this book, we will have a good understanding of the behavior referred to by derogatory terms such as "lying", "bragging", and "deception", and the author does not stop at reaching a shallow conclusion such as "in fact everyone lies", but breaks through in many ways and constantly deepens this difficult theme. He said that humans are highly social animals, so whether it is telling the truth or lying, there is the best reason for humans. This is indeed insightful.
No.5 "Scale Thinking: How to Deal with the Complexity of the Digital Age"
By Sun Yang/Sun Wenlong/Translated by CITIC Publishing Group July 2022
Many of the questions worth asking are focused on contemporary experiences that are fully permeated by "big data" and artificial intelligence. The advantage of Jamer Hunt's book is that the explanation of "scale" is particularly vivid and clear. He tells several cases led by scientists, artists, and tech companies, and asks us to imagine changing butterfly larvae in pupae, ants with hundreds of millions of times larger, and orders of magnitude like bilion and trilion. He reveals how things change when scale breaks out of the framework to which man adapts.
The scale and scale of things that are beyond our comprehension affect our real life experiences: the number of Holocaust victims, the salary of CEOs, the scene of plastic bottles piling up every minute out of the factory, the cost of the world financial crisis... In the second half of the book, the author uses more and more new terms, as if they themselves become footnotes to a world that has become super-complex; However, there are still many ideas that are not empty words, such as "every activity is a dynamic 'push and pull' movement that engages the brain, body and senses." Coordination is not just about staring intently at a computer screen, but reaffirming the primacy of the body and mind as a means to embrace complexity more humbly and fully"—such tongue-in-cheek words, but good words worth appreciating.
No.4
Tribal and State Formation in the Middle East
Philip Curry / Joseph Kestina/Editor-in-Chief Han Zhibin et al. / Translated by the Commercial Press May 2022
No matter how new you are to the Middle East, how unfamiliar you are to Islam, nomadic tribes, sedentary peoples and the geography of the Middle East, if you can imagine that many people live in a mosaic of land and are interested in it, you will find this collection very good. The laws, customs, social structure, marriage system, etc. of Middle Eastern tribes are all related to their complete set of "world views", and exploring how they view relatives, other members of the tribe, and people outside the tribe can form many interesting topics.
The best article in the book is undoubtedly one by the famous scholar Ernest Gellner. In refined academic language, Gellner recounts the changes in tribal social structures from the Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun after the establishment of the Ottoman Empire. In his autobiography, Khaldun predicted that "the future belongs to the Turks and Arabs because they were densely populated and cohesive," and Gellner's eye-opening comparison of the geography of the Middle East and the European Alps was eye-opening.
No.3
Paris Review Writer Interview 7
Paris Review Editorial Department/Editor Tang Jiang et al./Translation 99 Reader, People's Literature Publishing House, July 2022
Perhaps only the voices of writers are worth hearing, and they are those who completed their lives in the 20th century. In this book, writers who are early in their birth and center, such as Brodsky, Donald Baselm, John Cheever, Burroughs, etc., speak more solidly, richly, and have more distinct personalities than those who are still late. Baselme, Wilhelm Burroughs, etc. are experimental, and their works may not be easy to like, but the interviews are full of flashing ideas and lively speculation. Their exploration of form expresses a breakthrough with the self and a deep dissatisfaction with the world.
Of course, the conversations of still living and active writers, such as Julian Barnes, are also of high quality, just more "regular", probably because he is too familiar with modern media interviews. Another highlight of the book, Hertha Müller, the controversial 2009 Nobel Prize winner in literature, details how she grew up and lived in an unusual linguistic environment, telling stories that explain the ubiquitous panic and hostility to many things in her work.
The longest and most outstanding interview is by George Steiner. As a critic, Steiner told his interviewers, "What is the role of people like you and me? We are diversion fish, these weird little things, swimming in front of the real big guys — big sharks or big whales — warning people: 'The big guys are coming. From the interview, we learn that Michael Posiger's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is Steiner's treasure unearthed, and that this once-great bestseller is not simply a product of the times, and it now deserves more rereading.
No.2
The Structure of the Scientific Revolution
By Thomas Kuhn/Zhang Butian/Translated by Peking University Press, July 2022
Max Planck said in his autobiography: "A new scientific truth triumphs not by convincing its opponents, but by the eventual death of these opponents and the growth of a new generation familiar with it." This sentence, Kuhn commented, should not be understood to mean that "scientists also make mistakes and refuse to admit mistakes" and that "truth always triumphs", but should be understood that the scientist is difficult to force to convert to another "paradigm", because he is convinced that the old paradigm will eventually solve all its problems, and he devotes his most exuberant life energy to studying, explaining, and expanding this old paradigm.
Scholars are bound to suffer from naming if they want to reach a wider mass realm: just as Derrida is often asked "how is your 'deconstruction'", Kuhn is also plagued by the controversy caused by "paradigms", and he writes related articles in response to controversy, making it clear that such concepts are created to reluctantly name something that exists but is difficult to understand. Kuhn's sense of problem is actually clear: he cannot accept the simple linear explanation of the past in science textbooks: science, from Ptolemy to Copernicus, from Aristotle to Newton, from astrology to astronomy, from alchemy to chemistry... Such a process of replacing backwardness with progress and superstition with truth.
Kuhn lived up to the good genes of Jews who were good at asking questions. He is familiar with the narrative of the Old Testament, believing that narratives are juxtaposed rather than monolithic, and when reading The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, we should pay special attention to his emphasis on "starting another narrative", and he can ask "if not, what if not" for any existing narrative and conclusion, which is indeed irritating and uncomfortable for the majority of people in the "comfort zone of knowledge". Kuhn, of course, was the first to pay for it, and the controversy that plagued him for a lifetime with "paradigms" caused him to express some chagrin in his later years.
No.1 The Age of Cathedrals: Art and Society (980-1420)
George Dolby/by Gu Xiaoyan/Translated by Watchmen, Nanjing University Press, September 2022
In 1000 AD, Western European civilization entered the deepest part of the dark period, and in the society tightly covered by the shadow of religion, most of the monks who should have become elites were also degenerate and corrupted, and a few excellent elements were concentrated in monasteries. However, the Muslims of the East and the barbarians of the North suspended their fighting, giving Western Europe the dawn of recovery. The master historian George Dolby, starting from around 1000 AD, recounts what kind of culture and art have emerged on this small continent for more than 400 years since then.
The style of the book can only be described as "tapestry-like". Dolby's writing is intertwined and intertwined: about secular monarchs, churches, monasteries, feudal lords, knights, the respective rise and fall of cities and villages, about the mathematics, physics, and astronomy adopted by the church, and especially about the changes that have taken place in the core ideas of Christianity during these years, along with the struggle between church and kingship, etc., Dolby's account is almost incomplete and incomprehensible. For cathedrals, the main bearers of culture and art, Dolby paints a picture of their construction, stagnation, prosperity, meaning in different eras, and relationships with various classes and social groups. This work, first published in 1976, does so much that is simply impossible.