Accidental South

Author: Chen Runhua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: This brilliant work has transformed the current state of literary creation with its deep affection, keen insight, persistence, romantic temperament, and focus on folk life. The author, a young man with degrees in science, law, and literature, yet calls himself a vagrant. He has long drifted in the lower strata of society, much like many literary precursors. He listens to stories, encounters stories, and records what he hears and experiences in a notebook. He believes that all things have spirits and that there is harmony among them. He believes that on the streets, fields, under large trees, or in those corners yet to be reached, there are still many undiscovered destinies, emotions, taboos, life experiences, and human freedom. His thoughts, along with the drunks, ghosts, fools, toughs, madmen, gamblers, and prostitutes drifting in the countryside, as well as melancholic officers, lucky barbers, and hide-and-seek fugitives, are like our neighbors—no, perhaps we are them. They live on the southern land, generation after generation, and will continue to live there. The work is full of talent, with and thought-provoking text, making it a contemporary legend and a modern-day "Decameron."