<b>A year has passed, and it is time for us to recommend the best book of the year. </b>
<b>Unlike previous years, this time we have changed the classification of humanities, business, science, life aesthetics and fiction that will last for three years, and will be divided into fictional parts and non-fiction parts recommended. </b>
In the fiction section, as last year, this year we are also inviting professional readers of fiction to recommend the best novels they have seen in 2018, hoping to give you a little reference to explore the complexity and possibilities of novels. Novels are old and new, but the common denominator is what these professional readers consider to be truly good novels. There are 13 of them, with different ages and identities, including from the post-50s to the post-80s, from writers and translators to scholars, book reviewers, book editors, etc. In a way, it's also a reflection of complexity and possibility.
<b>This is the first of a complete recommended article for the novel, and the recommenders are mainly scholars and translators. They include Dan Hansong, Huang Xun, Yang Ling, Shi Xiaowei and Kong Yalei. </b>
<h3>
<b>The Warpsho Chronicles,</b> The Warpshaw Scandal<b>, and</b> Miss Lonely Hearts</h3>
<b>Dan Hansong: Associate Professor of the Department of English at Nanjing University, author of "Studying with Reading", translating "Our Town", "St. Louis Lei Bridge", "Sexual Evil", "Flaubert's Parrot" and so on. </b>
Author: [U.S.] John Cheever
Translator: Zhu Shida
Publisher: Yilin Publishing House
Price: RMB 69.00
A reader who has not read "Giant Radio" and "The Swimmer" may hardly be a qualified lover of foreign literature. But if you stubbornly carry the expectation of John Cheever's classic short stories, you probably won't like the Warpshaw Chronicles and its sequel, The Warpshaw Scandal. One might argue that the 1958 National Book Award awarded this debut novel was actually a compensatory affirmation of the great achievements of Cheever's short stories. However, no one knows better than Cheever that the short story and the long novel are fundamentally different literary genres—the former's subtlety and delicacy evoke the pleasure of reading, which the latter seeks to reproduce in the more magnificent social tracts. If the short story is a glimpse into life, then the long story is life itself, and it often means tedious and rambling details and ritual-like laying out. Cheever has no intention of continuing to play "Chekhov of the Suburbs of America" in novels as readers expect, and he must act according to the new narrative logic in the new genre. The semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of a family in a fishing village in New England, but Cheever does not lose his usual ironic sharpness and angry power because of the psychological distance to the characters. He is also obsessed with depicting people who have lost their innocent youth, forced to get involved in an adult world that is superficially comfortable and comfortable, with a chaotic and numb core. This contrast in time spans is strong and alarming, and the key to distinguishing Cheever from other literatures about middle-class life. Cheever seems to want us to understand that his out-of-context, fragmented, eccentric way of writing is not intended to please anyone who has a golden-grained view of the "great novel," but only to his own feelings about these peculiar new England inhabitants. Although he writes humorously and even sadly, there is a reason for all this: it is precisely because they are still seeking comfort and order in this noisy and chaotic world, or unwilling to let go of the innocent past, that they will continue to run into walls. Those who give up will not break their heads and bleed. I'm not sure you'll finish reading both books, and I'm even less sure you'll end up falling in love with Cheever's novel art. But if you end up seeing, like me, the literary power of the Warpsho Chronicle and the Warpshoe Scandal after an uncomfortable and anxious reading experience, then you'll know another, more complete Cheever.
By Nathaniel West
Translator: Xia Wenyun
Publisher: Nanjing University Publishing House
Price: RMB 36.00
Nathaniel West's Miss Lonely Heart has long been hidden behind the huge literary fame of the so-called "first Hollywood novel," Locust Day, but in fact, according to Harold Bloom, the literary status of Locust Day is simply not worthy of the name, it "wastes West's genius." Bloom tells us in an irrefutable tone that Miss Lonely Heart is a well-deserved literary masterpiece, better than "The Sun Still Rises", "The Great Gatsby" and "The Temple". Miss Lonely Heart is a truly painstaking work, representing West's most astonishing literary talent and stylistic awareness. It is ostensibly writing about the "American nightmare" of the Great Depression of the 1930s, but in fact it is exploring in poetic language the limits of everyday suffering and the possibility of strange grace in the experience of modernity. "Searching for Faith" constitutes the core proposition of "Miss Lonely Heart". As an outcast of Jewish identity, West entered the dialogue between modernity and religion in the most negative and extreme ways. The reader must do his best to bring himself to the surface as he reads, because what this book is about is so vicious and ugly that we can all be engulfed in the terrifying waves of despair at all times. However, this extremely uncomfortable reading experience is the core of Miss Lonely Heart itself. Only in the most utter disillusionment, the most bitter pessimism, can we see the true light of faith with West's protagonist. Perhaps it is in this sense that we can agree with the protagonist's life judgment: between the two lives of "chaotic and disorderly but extraordinary" and "orderly but meaningless", it is better to choose the former until death.
<h3><b>CatKer and The Flood</b></h3>
<b>Huang Jie:</b> <b>Professor of the Department of French at Nanjing University, Yunshan Chair Professor of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, French translator, author of "Passing", "Idle Turning Books", "Duras's Little Music", "A Literary Life", etc., and "The Little Prince", "The Earth of Mankind", "Sunday", "Flower Affair", "However", "Dora Brudé" and so on. </b>
When Curiosity Daily (www.qdaily.com) asked me to recommend two of the best novels I had read in 2018, what flashed through my mind was "cats", or cat books of all kinds, or profound, or fantasy, or mysterious, or affectionate... Recommend two of them! One is "Cat Guest" by Japanese writer Takashi Hirata, and the other is "Flood" by French writer Philippe Forrest, and I'm not sure if it's "best", but I'm sure there is a strange and hidden connection between the two books. It is as if it is the same cat, traveling through time and space on a certain day to suddenly break into the life of one of them, and then suddenly disappearing on a certain day, in the confusion, life reveals its original color, so that we can see very clearly the softness that cannot be touched in the depths of our hearts, and what breaks the is the covetous, unwilling, memory-lengthened memory and snuggling, which has always been.
Author: [Japanese] Takashi Hirata
Translator: Li Manhong
Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House
Price: RMB 38.00
"One day, a kitten inadvertently broke into a lightning path. A few days later, the family of big beech trees was determined to adopt it, a five-year-old boy. The author points out at the beginning that "someone else's cat" is a true story that takes place near the end of the Showa era. "I", who was nearly middle-aged, was originally an editor of a publishing house, but because he witnessed the death of several familiar writers and old friends, he decided to "walk empty-handed", quit his mediocre job, and lived with his wife in a corner of an antique old house, began to write behind closed doors, and lived a simple and simple secluded life. "I" and my wife have no children and no daughters, when renting a house, the landlord and the old lady specially explained that "pets are prohibited", but in the end, I could not withstand the persistent begging of the neighbor's little boy, and finally made a compromise. Since then, this kitten, named "Little" by the little boy, has run and played freely in the courtyard of the old house, visiting the door from side to side, and gradually becoming familiar with "us", although it does not bark or let it hug, but over time the little one has become a part of our life, "from the crack of the slightly open window, like a small river constantly flowing down the gentle slope, little by little penetrating." Along with something that can be called destiny. ”
The River of Destiny has never been a calm river, but has only been temporarily whitewashed by the quiet and peaceful atmosphere created by kittens, bright moon pine winds, and occasionally visiting cicadas and dragonflies. Nothing can be set in stone, nothing can be undefeated, the little one died, the old and sick landlord couple could no longer afford to take care of the old house, moved to the suburban pension apartment, a few months later the grandfather died, we had no money to buy the old house, even if it was only a small part, we had to move away, the old house became more and more depressed, and finally it was demolished in the era of the bubble economy bursting, becoming a "pale open space". Everything is gone, except for memories.
Four hours of reincarnation, vicissitudes, so much helplessness, the only consolation may be that there is a stray cat in front of our new apartment, and one of the kittens looks very small.
Author: [French] Philippe Forest, Chinese translations include Schrödinger's Cat, However, The Eternal Child, etc.
Publisher: Galima Press
"Cat Guest" is a private novel full of Japanese atmosphere, loose and true, with several sketches similar to white paintings, showing the turmoil of an era and the floating of people's hearts with some seemingly unrelated daily trivia. I suppose to myself that the French writer Philippe Forrest may have read Hiraru's Cats before writing Schrödinger's Cat and The Flood, because the 2004 French translation of the book (Le Chat qui venait du ciel, the title of which was changed to somewhat sensational Cat From Heaven, Like a Gift from Heaven) was on that year's best-seller list as soon as it was published.
At the beginning of The Flood, "I" return to the place where I was born and lived. Although the city may be destroyed by an impending flood, people are still building a lot of work in the city. In the collective indifference, the world in front of us is disappearing, which is a "ghost city" engulfed by time and emptiness. "I" am introverted and rarely interact with people. One day suddenly a cat came and broke into my house, jumped onto my couch and bed, and without seeing it, it had been in and out of my house for nearly a year, making me think I was its owner. But one day, it suddenly disappeared. I looked around the city for it and never found it. The cat's departure reminds me of my previous life: many years ago, when my four-year-old only daughter died of illness, I was immersed in mourning and could not extricate myself, so I left my hometown. It was my mother's critical illness that allowed me to return to the city and experience the pain and fear of losing my loved ones again.
One night there was a fire that burned all night. While fleeing, I met two neighbors, a pianist and a writer. I felt sorry for them, but after a while they both disappeared, and I didn't call the police, but I felt very lost and empty. The autumn rains continue until winter. Finally the flood struck, and seeing the city being flooded, I climbed up to the roof and cried. At this time a cat came to me, and I immediately recognized it as the one who had escaped from me, and cried even more fiercely. A few days later, the flood receded and order slowly returned. My two neighbors still haven't shown up, but I'm relieved. Perhaps it is this lost cat that makes me believe, or at least make me hope, that what I have lost will come back to me, that the good that was once there, the people I loved so much, in one way or another visible or invisible.
<h3>"Berta Isla", "Mac y su contratiempo", "Mirlo blanco, cisne negro" (White Squid, Black Swan) and "Desde la sombra"</h3>
<b>Yang Ling: Associate Professor of Spanish Department of Capital Normal University, Spanish translator, translator of "Love in the Time of Cholera", "Hidden Harmony", "Vertical Journey", "Murder in the Bath", "Unknown University" (co-translation), etc. </b>
Title: Berta Isla
Author: Javier Marías, Chinese translations include "So Pale Heart", "Fascination", "No More Love" and so on.
Publisher: Alfaguara
"Bertha Isla", a story that combines elements of love and espionage, begins with suspense: "For a long time, she could not determine whether her husband was her husband. Sometimes she felt yes, sometimes she felt no, sometimes she decided not to believe in anything, just to live with him like this, and to live with this man who was like him but much more mature than him. ”
The hero and heroine in the story are still young and privately destined for life, but the hero who created people and came from a spy family could not escape the arrangement of fate, and suddenly disappeared, and the heroine fell into a long wait like Odyssey's wife. When the two meet again many years later, they are already human.
The novel explores loyalty and betrayal, life and death, self and other, growth and transformation, with twists and turns, and no lack of reflections on human nature, winning the 2017 Novel Criticism Award and being called the best novel of the year by the Spanish newspaper El País.
The novel also has feminist overtones, and the heroine's situation is universal: the disappearance of the male, the absence of the male as the other half of the family. Another topic worth pondering is the embarrassment of losing and regaining. I don't know if it is very embarrassing for the recipient, for the returner, because others will say: You are already considered a dead person, and you can no longer be the original person.
In the novel, the writer continues to shuttle between the classic texts, forming an intertextuality with the works of literary giants such as Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot. At the end of the novel, the writer quotes a sentence from Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities" to explain the complexity of human nature: "Every beating heart is a secret even to the heart that is closest to it, the heart that naps or beats next to it." ”
Title: Mac y su contratiempo
Author: Enrique Vila-Matas, Chinese translations include Bartolby Syndrome, Seemingly Dublin, and Paris Never Ending.
Publisher: Seix Barral
Mike and His Encounter, a 2017 novel by Henrique Vera-Matas, is a story about writers and writers, incorporating the writer's creative experience and reflections on literature. The protagonist, Mike, is a small man who is unemployed due to the economic crisis and decides to regain his hobby of writing in boredom, because his biggest dream was to become a writer. He secretly reiterates his resolve to his neighbor, who is a famous writer, but the latter is unaware of Mike's existence. Mike admired the neighbor and often spied on his life. During a voyeuristic, Mike overhears the writer talking about an early idea he decided to abandon. Mike immediately decided to add his story to this wonderful story. The whole novel is cleverly structured, containing multiple levels of reading, sometimes looking like a writer's diary, sometimes like a literary review, both the suspense of criminal investigation and the trajectory of the protagonist's growth. The writer expresses his views on novel creation through the narrator's mouth: "The novels I like are always like Chinese boxes, which contain layers of stories. ”
Title: Mirlo blanco, cisne negro
By Juan Manuel de Prada
Publisher: Espasa
The White Squid, the Black Swan is an interesting book published by Juan Manuel de Prada in 2016, with obvious banter and irony in its title. The novel tells the story between two writers who have lost their friendship. The young protagonist, Barestero, has just begun to write, and by chance has cemented the respected old writer Saldranha. After reading the work that the young writer had just published, the old writer was greatly amazed and admired, and since then, the old writer who has been ostracized for political reasons has placed this talented young writer under the wings of his "black swan" and strived to make him a rare "white crow" in the Spanish literary world. However, this sympathetic friendship soon turned into poison: the old writer became a master of psychological manipulation, while the young writer became the puppet of the spiritual teacher. In order to make the apprentice a tool, the old writer provoked his relationship with his fiancée, and even allowed the apprentice to cultivate ambiguous feelings with his wife, coupled with the appearance of a female poet, which made the relationship between the two writers more and more delicate. The theme of the novel is literature itself, and de Prada uses this work to critically reflect on the world of literature, arguing that the so-called literary genius is likely to swallow up the best writers, and at the same time, satirizing the shortcomings of the publishing world. Like the black-and-white opposition in the title, the whole novel is half comical drama and the other half is a tragedy without an ending.
Title: Desde la sombra (Secret Manipulation)
Written by Juan José Millás, Chinese translation of "Mirror into Three".
"Covert Manipulation", a 2016 novel published by Milias, is an unexpected story: the unemployed Damian steals an object in an antique shop and hides it in a closet, which is sold, so Damian makes a home in a couple's bedroom as if it were part of furniture. Damian secretly observes the family, and then enters the heart of the hostess Lucia, gradually understands her fears and dreams, and finally finds the value of her own existence. This work is easily reminiscent of another work by Milias, "Three People in the Mirror", in both stories, the protagonist discovers the self and the true meaning of life by diving into the world of others, and perhaps only by abandoning the so-called self can we gain insight into the human heart and finally talk to the true self. In addition, Milias's simple and highly condensed language and simple philosophy are the attraction of his works, as the writer and critic Antonio Idulvi commented, "every square centimeter of every page can maximize the reality" in his works.
<h3><b>"The Railroad Man" and "No More Man"</b></h3>
<b>Shi Xiaowei: Professor of the Japanese Department of Shanghai Sunda University, researcher and translator of Japanese literature, who has been living in Japan for many years. Translations include "The Teacher's Bag", "</b><b>1Q84</b><b>", "When I Talk About Running, What Do I Talk About", "After Dark", "Colorless Tasaki Sakura and His Year of Tour", "My Profession is a Novelist", "Travels in China" and so on. </b>
"Railroad Man" is a collection of short stories by Jiro Asada. There are eight works in total: 1 Railroadman, 2 Love Letters, 3 Devils, 4 in The Horns, 5 Garo, 6 Obon, 7 Santa Claus is a Nest Waste, and 8 Invitation Letters from Orion.
The protagonists of the eight novels are railway workers, street greenskins and foreign migrant workers, wicked college students and weak housewives, outcast wage earners with ill-fated backgrounds, amorous and gullible fashion shopkeepers and unscrupulous adulterous salesmen, isolated wives who have been derailed by their husbands, clumsy and weak pimps who have gone astray but have a good heart, and wage-earners who seem helpless after the bubble economy has burst. All written are tragicomedies of the small people of the city.
"The Railroad Man", which was adapted into a film in 1999, directed by Kang Nan of the Lower Flag and starring Ken Takakura, was widely acclaimed after its release, and was the most widely known work in the book, so it was used as the title of the book. This statement may not be appropriate: the novel may be said to have created a moving image of a "Japanese Lei Feng". The protagonist, Sato Etomatsu, is the station manager of a remote station in Hokkaido called Hokkaido - said to be the station manager, but in fact, he does not even have a station staff, and is a pure "light pole commander". He has a "screw spirit", for decades as a day, the grand duke selflessly buried his head in hard work, in order to work, in other words, in order to serve the public, he sacrificed his daughter who was not born for a long time and his wife who had been with him for many years, and finally he also fell on the job, which can be said to bow down and die.
Otomatsu is an employee of a huge railway company called "Japan Railway Hokkaido". Its predecessor was the State Railways (State Railway Company). JR Hokkaido has a registered capital of 9 billion yen, a total of 6,797 employees, a total railway length of 2,552 kilometers, 1,251 passenger trains per day, and 416 railway stations, including 102 manned stations and 314 unmanned stations. Otomatsu is the stationmaster of one of the small stations. Although privatized, its nature as a public instrument providing travel services to the general public has not changed. As a member of this huge organization, as a railway man and a railway station chief, Yi Song's identity as a "public man" is self-evident. At the same time, as a husband and a father, Yi Song is obviously also a "private person", shouldering unshirkable family responsibilities to his wife and daughter.
Through a touching and profound story, the novel celebrates the dedication of Yi Song as an "individual" (both public and private), while "destroying the private and serving the public", it seems that while torturing the "organization" as a public instrument blindly asks for dedication from the "individual", ignoring the ruthless side of the rights and interests of the "individual", it seems to urge the reader to reflect on the interrelationship between the "organization" and the "individual".
A major feature of this collection of novels may be said to be the author's preference for occult techniques. Of the eight short stories, except for the three 2.7.8 that are purely realistic, the other five are full of fantasy. In the author's pen, the boundaries of the human world and the other world dissolve, the everyday and the super everyday are integrated, the habitat and the dead are connected, and the characters of the work naturally cross the boundary, bringing an artistic effect that pure realism cannot provide. And this kind of depiction, in fact, is a common means that is not uncommon in China's classical novels, and it can always be seen in Japan's traditional novels, perhaps it can be said that it is a common phenomenon in the Chinese character cultural circle, so Chinese readers should not feel too violated when reading it.
When the book won the prestigious Naoki Prize (February 1997), Junichi Watanabe, one of the eight judges, bluntly criticized: "The author is too familiar with the tear-jerking tears, and the shallowness of the result is quite worrying for years-old novel writers." ”
Whether it is "shallow and worrying" is probably a matter of opinion, but I am afraid that it will vary from person to person. However, "I am familiar with the tear-inducing tears" seems to be a conclusive fact - others dare not say that when I translated this book, I did indeed have been caught in its way, and I was repeatedly teared by the tear gas bullets of Jiro Asada - ah, ugly. Excuse me.
Author: [Sun] Jiro Asada
Translator: Shi Xiaowei
Publisher: Reader | Wenhui Publishing House
Price: RMB 42.00
As for Osamu Dazai's "No More Man", because it is too famous, there is no need to say more. Just two points:
First, the title of the book is "human disqualification", but this is just a "non-translation" copied from the original Japanese text, because it is not Chinese, so those who do not understand Japanese are very likely to misunderstand its meaning;
According to the author's survey, so far 23 Chinese translations have been published, while the English and French translations have only one.
The version recommended here is a pair of translations, i.e. the left page is the original Japanese text, and the right page is a humble translation Chinese. If you are interested in learning Japanese, you may wish to read it in comparison, which may be helpful. Of course, reading it in comparison with the other 22 Chinese translations may also be able to experience a different kind of fun. Of course, if this is too time-consuming, it may be a disadvantage that attracts the displeasure of the sages. As a translator, I hope that reading the translation alone will bring pleasure to the sages.
Recommend your own translation, doomed to escape the ridicule of selling melons. However, frankly speaking, the author does not read Chinese novel for a long time, and he is ashamed of the grand literary situation in Hainei. Recommending your own translation is actually a helpless move. I still hope that the readers will be looking forward to the massive amount of original yu.
Author: [Sun] Osamu Dazai
Publisher: East China University of Science and Technology Press
Price: RMB 36.80
<h3>The Radetzky March and Light Years</h3>
<b>Kong Yare:</b> <b>Writer and English translator, author of novels such as "The One Who Does Not Lose", "Volcano Hotel", etc., "Phantom Book", "Book of Longing", "However, Beautiful: The Book of Jazz", "Light Years" and so on. </b>
Author: [Au] Joseph Roth
Translators: Guan Er, Wang Ning
Publisher: Lijiang Publishing House
Price: RMB 65.00
In fact, mediocrity is as easy to identify as greatness, but the latter is extremely rare. So, just by reading the first chapter of the Radetzky March, we can almost immediately confirm that this is a great sound. Consider this paragraph:
Captain Joseph Trota Feng Zipoerye stood in the middle of this despicable and cold room, like a god of war: wearing a glittering ribbon, a steel helmet painted black and shiny, a pair of polished boots on his feet; a spur glittering; the two rows of dazzling buttons on the chest of the jacket almost burst into flames, making the Maria Theresia medallion look incomparably imposing. This is how the son stood before his father; the old man stood up slowly, as if to match the radiance of his son with a slow welcome motion. Captain Trotta kissed his father's hand while leaning down to have him kiss his forehead and cheek. "Sit down." The old man said. The captain undid off some of the glowing things on his body and sat down.
Solemn and sarcastic. Slow and light. Precise and sad. Humorous and sacred. It is reminiscent of many great sounds (Kafka, Thomas Mann, Schultz), but apparently it is a unique and unique sound that belongs only to Joseph Roth. But who is Joseph Roth? Another overlooked master, a writer's writer—or, even, a "writer's writer's writer's writer." Because the writers he admired were already "writers of writers"—such as Couche and Nadine Godimer. The latter borrowed the words of another great German-language novelist, Muzier, to describe Roth in a long book review: A man who is angry about his time inevitably hurts himself. Roth may indeed have died of anger at the times (he died in 1939 at the age of forty-five), but rather, he may have died of the repression (and transformation) of that anger—he used all his genius to turn it into a calm, elegant, and mournful work of art. The Radetzky March is the best example.
By the way, I recommend the translation that Guan Er and Mr. Wang Ning collaborated on. Translations are as important to a work as the weather is to fly.
Author: [U.S.] James Souter
Translator: Kong Yare
Publisher: Republic of China 丨 Guangxi Normal University Press
Price: RMB67.00
In general, according to certain conventions or rules, we should avoid recommending works that we (or are related to ourselves). But I still decided to recommend Lightyear — even though I was the translator of the novel myself. This is mainly because Lightyear itself is a work of extreme contempt (and violation) of conventions and rules. This is embodied in the context of the story's era, 1958 to 1978, perhaps one of the most dramatic periods in human history, but all the major current events of the time— from the Vietnam War to the assassination of Kennedy to the moon landing to the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Beatles — are lost in the novel. They are like the residue of time, filtered by James Sauter (and his spiritual incarnation, Lightyear heroine Redena), and what is ultimately left is life itself, the essence of life. What is the essence of life? Redena's answer was: food, sheets, clothes. In other words, the essence of life is the surface. For the mystery of life, the mystery is the mystery, that is, loving and creative to eat, clothe, live, die, live and die— in fact, this sentence can be used to perfectly summarize the entire content of "Lightyear". With a series of almost miraculously vivid scenes like New Wave cinema lenses, James Souter almost subverted the traditional literary system: thus, Sauter created literature, just like the life created by Redna, the essence is the surface, the content is the form, and the details are the meaning.
This subversion paid the price: Since its publication in 1975, Lightyear has long been undervalued and ignored, selling dismal sales and not winning any literary awards. No, perhaps arguably, it won one of the highest literary prizes: time. Nearly half a century after its publication, it is becoming more and more widely read, it has become the bible written by many well-known writers in Europe and the United States, and it is becoming a classic masterpiece without any objection. More importantly, its transcendentality exudes a perpetual and living vitality that prompts every reader to ask themselves: How do I live? The question never seems to be so pressing as it is today, when everyone is torn apart by the flood of online messages, that we can praise Lightyear in the words that Borges described Wilde's work: it seems so young, as it was written this morning.
<h3>Attached: Kon Yaré's Top 10 Books of 2018</h3>
<b>1. "Light Years"</b>
I spent a year translating this novel, and my feelings are detailed in the afterword "Autumn Light".
<b>2. The Radetzky March</b>
Another overlooked master of fiction. His irony and absurdity exude a blue sanctity.
<b>3. Miracles</b>
Get the pager ready. Get ready for tears. Get ready to be a better person. Be prepared to continue believing in the greatness of fiction.
<b>4. "Chilean Nights"</b>
One of Bolaño's best works. Density like a meteorite, and light as a breeze.
<b>5. Greenwich Meridian</b>
I wrote a book review of Eschnoz's anthology—to borrow a wonderful short story title from himself, "Twelve Women in the Luxembourg Gardens," entitled "Fifteen Novels Clockwise in jean-Esznolds Park."
<b>6. Ode to Infinity</b>
Infinite praise of "Ode to Infinity". Infinite appreciation for Soleils. Full of introductions, aphorisms, insights, insights—every paragraph has a sentence to excerpt, and every page is illuminated by lightning.
<b>7. The Book of Leviathan</b>
One of the best adult picture books of 2017. The best postmodern picture book of the last decade. I have to limit the number of pages I see each day.
<b>8. "Another Beauty"</b>
Susan Sontag wrote a long book review for it.
<b>9. Shadow of Dreams</b>
Roland Barthes's postmodern, fragmentary writing reached its peak as early as the Qing Dynasty in China. An example: the article is the landscape of the desk, and the landscape is the article on the ground.
<b>10. "Now"</b>
Jeff Dyer is a literary playboy. He transforms genres and themes as he does as he transforms his lover. My translation of "However, Beautiful" is about jazz. This book is written for photography.
The title picture is stills from the movie "Railroad Man", from: Douban