Speaking of the current high-profile post-90s rising star female writers in the European literary world, in addition to Sally Rooney in Ireland, it is the Dutch novelist Mariek Lucas Reinnerfeld, who became the youngest winner in the history of the International Booker Prize last year with her novel "Restless Nights". First published in the Netherlands in 2018, Restless Nights became a bestseller and was recently introduced into Chinese by the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House.
In the eyes of the translator and writer of "Restless Nights", Reinerfeld seems to be more stuck in the 20th century than Sally Rooney's sophistication, "Readers can often see traces of modern life in Sally Rooney's books, such as "Chat History" about new media communication methods; but "Restless Nights" does not appear much modern and contemporary things such as the Internet, nor can it see what 21st century teenagers usually have." This makes the two post-90s very different, one living in a modern city and full of debates among intellectuals; the other staying in a 20th-century farm family. ”
Set in a devout Dutch religious family living on a dairy farm, Night of Restlessness tells the story of a 10-year-old girl named Jas whose brother was killed in a skating accident, whose family fell to a breakdown and she was caught up in increasingly dangerous fantasies. According to industry reviews, this is a work that is difficult to classify, whether it is her farm, animals, or human desire itself, if you want to explain, it seems that you must invent a new vocabulary.
"The best contribution of this novel is that it contributes a new way of using language, to new possibilities for us to see life." In the view of the scholar Hu Sang, Reinerfeld has received a lot of attention from the European and American literary circles as soon as she debuted, but many book critics have also found that they cannot digest her with existing literary standards. Her uniqueness and alternativeity seem to be innate, or perhaps because her life trajectory is not the common "study, departure, and metropolitan life" common to modern young people, which makes her way of feeling, language, and writing more unique.
Rainerfield is a very special "post-90s", she likes to wear a suit, and is accustomed to replacing "me" with "them" when calling herself. She famously said that writing is a way of playing with the self you exist with.
From writing poetry to writing novels, the up-and-coming writer explores the joy of "playing with yourself." The poet Husan felt that there was no clear line between Reinerfield's poetry and fiction, "in a sense, her novel is poetry, poetry is fiction, and many sentences in novels are poetry-like existence." "Restless Night" is full of rich sensibility from beginning to end, and even every word, every thing has a rich and unique sensibility. ”
The novel is divided into three parts, the first part is about the death of the eldest brother Matisse, the second part is about the daily life of the Yas family on the farm after the loss of a member, and the third part is an unexpected ending. "I was in a constant state of grief when translating, and this sadness was pure, authentic. The metaphor of every event on the farm is beyond imagination. She thought that Night of Restlessness contained the purest sadness she had ever read.
Author: Xu Yang
Editor: Guo Chaohao
Image source: Publisher