Empty Mountain (2)

Author: A Lai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: Ten years after When Dust Settles, A Lai's new full-length novel is released, truly a case of "ten years of effort for one sword." A Lai's new work stands alongside When Dust Settles as twin peaks in artistic thought. The structural art and grand design of the novel represent A Lai's new exploration in art, presenting a completely different style from When Dust Settles. If When Dust Settles features a closed structure and a complete story, the new work, in order to depict the major theme of "the secret history of a village," adopts a shared culture and background, with different people and events forming a stereoscopic contemporary Tibetan rural landscape. This is known as the "petal-like" structural approach. The author's attitude in "depicting the secret history of a village" is extremely clear—it is neither singularly ethnic nor pastoral, nor legendary. The writer has profound cultural, religious, natural, and social experiences with Tibetan villages. Calling it "secret history" does not mean disclosing its mysteries, but rather using special techniques to reveal the pain that has been ignored and numbed. It is precisely for this reason that the novel has formed a grand scale. The major and solemn theme, the substantial and profound content, and the structure that the author masterfully controls offer deeper reflections on humanity and nature, politics and culture, religion, social harmony, and progress. This is a powerful realist work filled with masculine beauty, sweeping away the current literary scene's decline, triviality, and decay.