Soul Food

Author: Yu Hua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-01-01
Features: The Shanghai Writers Association and Wen Huo Bao jointly organized a group of 100 critics across the country to recommend the 10 most influential writers and 10 works of the 1990s through effective questionnaires. Among the 10 writers, Yu Hua was one of them; among the 10 most influential works (the other two being prose collections), Yu Hua's works accounted for two, namely Xu San's Blood and To Live. Meanwhile, Yu Hua's prose collection, in particular, has received recognition and attention from Chinese intellectuals.
Yu Hua gained fame in the literary world for his novels. In 1998, Italy had already awarded the highly influential Grinzana Cabo Festival Literature Prize internationally to this outstanding writer who was gradually gaining global recognition. This prize had also been awarded 12 years earlier to the 1998 Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, as well as internationally renowned writers such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Günter Grass, Doris Lessing, and Carlos Fuentes.
When asked how he got fascinated with prose again, Yu Hua replied: □"Prose and novels have entirely different modes of thinking. I write prose because I am fascinated by a new way of thinking. I don’t often write essays because their mode of thinking doesn’t differ much from that of novels. □"Real life, and the life experiences of writing novels and prose are completely different. At first, I completely struggled to find the language for my prose, but now I write it more fluently. However, I think I can’t write it anymore because I’ve realized that my desire to write novels is weakening while I’m writing prose. Compiling the essence of my prose is also a summary of my three-and-a-half years of writing. "□Reading Yu Hua’s prose, you will feel his unique way of thinking and style. His penetration into sentences reaches an astonishing level, to the extent that reality...