The rest is yours

Author: Xu Xing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-08-01
Features: "Everything Left Belongs to You" is the only novel by the renowned writer Xu Xing. Published in France and Germany in 2003, it became a bestseller, with Italian and Spanish versions also to be released within 2004. Upon its domestic release, discussions for film and television rights quickly followed. The novel vividly depicts the legendary story of two dreamy and financially struggling young men from Beijing who wander the world, encountering obstacles and awkwardness everywhere they go. The author's pen touches everything—from cities to villages, from China to abroad, effortlessly capturing diverse social scenes. The gentle warmth of life and its sinister tricks, the decline and transformation of ideals, the clash and fusion of Eastern and Western cultural values—all are imbued with a touch of black humor in the author's hands. The work features an understated and humorous language style, showcasing rich and imaginative creativity, offering readers abundant literary enjoyment. "Everything Left Belongs to You" is a powerful and deeply impactful novel by the celebrated writer Xu Xing. Xu Xing's works published around the mid-1980s, such as "Themeless Variations," "Tales of the City," "The Starving Mouse," and "Inaction at the Crossroads," once had a profound influence on Chinese literature with their deep philosophical insights, humorous and vivid language, and extraordinary character portrayals. This book is a fresh and eye-catching work by Xu Xing after years of silence, vividly depicting the story of two dreamy and penniless vagrants wandering the world, making it highly readable. Through the unique perspective of these two vagrants, the author observes amusing scenes in daily life, which are then presented in the author's signature understated and humorous style, filled with rich imagination, offering readers abundant literary enjoyment.
These two vagrants, who could be called Don Quixote-like idealists, hope to find the truth of life in some corner of the world. They work as extras in movies for a living, act heroically on buses only to be beaten, and lose their travel expenses by gambling at random. During their travels in Tibet, they unknowingly get involved with a gang of smugglers and experience a profound psychological death in the wilderness. While wandering through Europe, they encounter a group of astonishingly eccentric people, suffer hardships as foreign laborers to make a living, and are swindled by foreigners in brothels. In the end, they find nothing, only realizing that they are always awkward and encounter obstacles everywhere, with everything already claimed—"what remains, however, belongs to you." The author's pen touches everything—from cities to villages, from China to abroad, effortlessly capturing diverse social scenes. The gentle warmth of life and its sinister tricks, the decline and transformation of ideals, the clash and fusion of Eastern and Western cultural values—all are imbued with a touch of black humor in the author's hands. After reading it, one closes the book in contemplation, even more moved by the sincerity of the protagonists.