10 1/2 volumes of human history

Author: Barnes
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-12-01
Features: The author uses the story of Noah's Ark as the main theme, weaving out ten independent stories and a reflective essay on his views on love, revealing his insights into the world. The author traverses ancient times, modernity, and the future, shifting between the human world, heaven, and the insect world. He depicts the foolishness of superstitious and ignorant people, portrays the absurdity of modern elites, exposes the cruelty and indifference of the powerful, or shows the selfishness and meanness of ordinary people in times of crisis, revealing the distortion of history, rich in philosophy, vast and magnificent. This book is a strange novel. It is full of skepticism when expressing the author's views on world history, and it rethinks objects that are generally considered to have "long been settled," such as history and love. When the author includes both reality and fiction, phenomenon and essence, matter and spirit, disaster and salvation, love and death in the novel, and when the author collages religious legends, retellings of stories, historical records, and personal narratives, this patchwork form, while bearing the distinct characteristics of postmodern literature, also constitutes an attitude of perception and experience of human existence for Barnes. Interestingly, Barnes never admits to using postmodern forms and techniques in his writing.