In July, writer Shen Dacheng's new work "Lost Man" was published by Taiwan Straits Publishing House, which tells the story of fifteen "cosmic people" who have lost navigation with strange ideas and strange imaginations.
Shen Dacheng, writer and editor of literary magazine, has a short story column "Strange People" in Sprout magazine. He is the author of the short story collections "The Man Who Remembered Repeatedly" and "Asteroid Falls in the Afternoon", and his works have twice been shortlisted for the Blancpain Prize for Literature in the Republic of China. And "Asteroid Dropped in the Afternoon" was listed on the Douban 2020 Chinese Literature Fiction Annual List TOP10.
Shen Dacheng has been shortlisted for the Blancpain Ideal Country Literature Award twice with his two collections of novels, "The Man Who Has Been Remembered Repeatedly" and "Asteroid Fell in the Afternoon", and has been affirmed by many judges and experts in the two sessions. Her works are distinctive and unique among the writers of her generation, describing the current situation and psychological dilemmas of contemporary life with her own whimsy, caring for those "people" and things in the only world we really have.
In the past few years, Shen Dacheng's works have continued to resonate with the majority of office workers, and they have found that these seemingly absurd strange people and wonders can find a counterpart in reality. The story "Miss Box Man", included in the previous game "Asteroids Fall in the Afternoon", even unexpectedly "predicted" a world in which social isolation and vaccinations would become the norm.
"Cosmic Man" is an extraordinary imaginary journey
The new work "Lost" focuses on the stories of fifteen "cosmic people" who have lost navigation, and once again presents the strange daily life of our time: people who doze off in the Starry Sky Theater but wake up with insight into the mysteries of the universe, small town department stores that have long been abandoned but have always lived with residents, the world's last mobile tribe shrinks giants, departed employees who hide in the garden of office buildings for several years, pedestrian bridges that are not satisfied with being fixed in one place, warehouse attendants who are responsible for guarding Star Wars war supplies... These non-sci-fi, non-alien, non-fantasy, non-magical stories are all concerned with various existences in the universe.
"We walked around and didn't know what we were doing, and of course we kind of knew what we were doing, and it wasn't right to say we didn't possess any identity, we were at least lost. The lost man is like a kind of work, and you have to do it carefully. Shen Dacheng, a small staff writer, thought methodically and carefully knitted, and once again completed an extraordinary imaginative journey.
Don Nuo: I am a reader of Shen Dacheng
Shen Dacheng's writing has a well-trained sense of drama, role, and stage, and all the conflicts and literary contradictions woven in the novel are like stage contradictions and dramatic contradictions. Some of the narratives that seem absurd are very symmetrical in reality, and her style is very distinct and unique among her contemporaries, and her treatment of realistic and transcendent stories is often surprising. The imagination is relaxed and open, and it cannot be touched.
--Su Tong
"The Lost Man", this time, Shen Dacheng's imagination seems to have taken a few steps forward; or rather, she seems to be more comfortable, more immersed in the imaginary world of her own solitude (a world of pure and pleasure!). ）。 ......
"The Man Who Knows the Mystery of the Universe", "The Child of Fireworks", "The Patient with Skin Disease" are cloudy, and it should not be difficult to perceive that Shen Dacheng imagines that the world and our real world are delicate but solid and reliable links--not a specific person, but a kind of person or group of people who are "classified" and have a certain common special state, a certain situation and even a dilemma. Shen Dacheng's imagination always began from this, "taking" a group of people at a time, tempting, rather than flying away, so that they could be exposed without being blocked or hindered.
...... Shen Dacheng's imaginary words are not alarming, always telling a magical story in calm words as Borges said... Everywhere and everywhere is a metaphor, giving us a feeling of looking back again and again. This real world may not be worthy of such care, but in the end, it is the only thing we really have.
Benjamin has said something similar, saying that imagination is a rare Neverland, very timid, easy to be scared away, so please speak quietly and quietly.
- Donno
As a unique young novelist in his contemporaries, Shen Dacheng once again depicted the strange daily life and life dilemmas of our times with her own gorgeous imagination, "This real world may not be worthy of such attention, but in the end, this is the only thing we really have." Perhaps in Shen Dacheng's writing, imagination can become our "breakthrough road", rather than a burst of fireworks.
Editor: Nandu reporter Zhu Rongting intern Lu Yang