Darkness

Schedule different time scales to restore ashes to fire again

Author of "Rain", the winning work of Peking University "World Chinese Literature Award"

Full Collection of Early Representative Works of Malaysian Chinese Literature Heavyweight Writer Huang Jinshu

※brief introduction※

"Dark Darkness" is a collection of two early collections of short stories by Huang Jinshu. Most of the stories happened in the rubber forest town in Nanyang: the Chinese who immigrated to Nanyang were surrounded by wild animals, racial oppression, colonial aggression, and identity anxiety, and faced various forms of separation, disappearance, and death. Huang Jinshu actively uses meta-fiction, irony, collage and other techniques to engage in dialogues with historical ailments, and presents Malaysian Chinese literature and the situation of Malaysian Chinese in an "enchanted" way. Behind each piece of black text is the author's repair and reconstruction of the loss of ethnic memory, as well as his reflection and thinking on the collective fate of the Nanyang Chinese.

※Editor's Choice※

☆"Dark Darkness" is a collection of short stories from Huang Jinshu's two debut works, and it is the first time that Huang Jinshu's early works have been completely introduced to the mainland. It includes many award-winning works such as "The Town That Rained", "The Storyteller", "The Disappearance of M" and "Fish Skeleton".

☆In these 21 heavyweight works, readers can read the description of the scenery full of tropical native style, the suspenseful atmosphere like a thriller movie, and the impression of the remote town with the continuous sound of sticky and hot rain. The deepest complex emotions of people towards home and hometown are vividly displayed in Huang Jinshu's pen.

☆The author strung together the heavy history of Nanyang in many novels, not just as a background setting, but also to reinterpret some gradually forgotten histories through this writing method, to resist mainstream interpretations, and to resist people's perception of Deliberate oblivion of certain stories. Huang Jinshu does not use traditional realistic brushwork to write about a certain event seriously: the scenes in his pen are torn apart, and the emotions and memories of the characters are disintegrated. As Zhang Jingyun, a researcher of Malaysian Chinese literature, pointed out: "He uses a new narrative art, a novel that is not like a novel, to construct a 'fictional reality' that has no hegemony and no authoritarian discourse power."

☆In Huang Jinshu's novels, questions about "how did Chinese literature in Malaysia be established?" and "the absence of classics in Malaysian Chinese literature" emerge from time to time as hidden themes behind the novel. As early as more than 20 years ago, he made sharp criticisms against the corruption of the Chinese literary world in Malaysia at that time. The famous literary scholar Wang Dewei once commented that he was a "bad boy" in the Chinese literary world, and Mo Luo of Nanyang (Lu Xun's words, Mo Luo spiritual guide The rebellious spirit of daring to resist traditional oppression). Such a big question about Chinese literature, as a mirror, can arouse people's thinking about the current situation of local literature, so as to reflect on the past and pursue the future.

☆Specially includes the new preface in 2017, two prefaces of the first edition, and commentary articles by Zhang Huisi, Yang Zhao, Zhang Jinzhong, and Zhang Guixing.

※Recommended by celebrities※

Huang Jinshu looks back on the personnel affairs in his hometown, combs the historical scars, the cultivation experience of his predecessors, the blood and tears of the Japanese army ravaging the Mahua villages ("The Nightmare" and "The Storyteller"), the rise and fall of the Malay Communist Party ("Fish Bones"), and the illegal activities in Indonesia in the 1980s. The public security terror caused by immigration ("Illegal Immigration") is all material. The rubber forest town is always the original scene he conceived. The humid and greasy atmosphere, the simple and unsophisticated people in the city, are gloomy and melancholy, and often murderous. Huang Jinshu is melancholy, but he "must write".

——Wang Dewei, Chair Professor of Harvard University

Even if "we" don't understand the archaeological stratigraphy of scattered people who hurt the clock in the heart of "Mahua", the difficult and obscure "historical scene" of the twentieth century can still "return the soul", The reading of "Liaozhai", Faulkner's "Southernization", and Marquez's "Hundred Years of Solitude": a mythological style with different histories and no rivers, ghosts and ghosts, and a large matrix of symbols flashing Squeeze and rave.

——Writer Luo Yijun

It is difficult for Taiwanese readers to understand the embarrassing contradictions of a Malaysian Chinese who was educated in Chinese since childhood, and even the tenderness and blood dripping when maintaining or even tearing this umbilical cord that comes from a Chinese-speaking mother to provide him with nutrients. It would be too simple to say that Jinshu's works only provide this kind of experience. The biggest advantage of Jinshu lies in the traps everywhere, which are easy to be misunderstood, like stepping into a virgin forest.

——Writer Zhang Guixing

In Huang Jinshu's novels, the plot of "enchantment" appears many times. The author is driven by some mysterious power to write works that seem familiar but unfamiliar. We can regard his own novels as products under the heavy phantom of literary history. His strong awareness of literary history makes his works different from those of other newcomers with proficient skills, clear creative motivation and text thickness that can be interpreted by multiple parties.

——Writer Yang Zhao

His brilliance lies in providing a guiding light for the tribe or readers without the efforts of the realist elders of patriarchal Mahua literature. The novels in the book focus on resuming suppressed ethnic memory or amnesia just like the narrator in "Blood Crash" doing fieldwork on "Malaysian history" summons the souls of the dead, highlighting the impossibility of reproduction and its political significance

——Literature researcher Zhang Jinzhong

Through writing novels, Huang Jinshu has been meticulously making an internal connection between Malaysian Chinese literature, modern literature, and even world literature. For example, some of the novels clearly exude the taste of Marquez, such familiar symbols as disappearance, disappearance, the damp feeling of the hometown in the dream, and ants on the manuscript all appear repeatedly.

——Zhang Huisi, Senior Lecturer, Department of Chinese, University of Malaya

※Award winning record※

☆The 7th Joint Literary Fiction Newcomer Award Short Story Recommendation Award ("Raining Town")

☆First place in the 2nd Kelian Novel Award ("Zheng Zenshou")

☆The 17th United Daily News Literary Award Short Story Excellence ("The Storyteller")

☆National Taiwan University Literary Award Novel Second Prize ("Sorrow for the Dead")

☆Special Award of the 3rd Township Youth Fiction Award ("M's Disappearance")

☆The 6th Malaysia Travel Taiwan Literary Award Novel Main Prize ("Big File")

☆First prize of "World Chinese Growth Novel Award" in the first "Little Lion Literature and Art" ("Tapir")

☆18th Times Literary Award Short Story First Prize ("Fish Bones")

☆The 14th Hong Xingfu Novel Award ("Fish Bones")