Myth of the Village 2 - Empty Mountain 2

Author: A Lai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: In the village of Jicun, the reader Dase lives in a treehouse with books as his companions. He has many questions but no answers. What he sees floating in the air is not just the poetic love between a beauty and a hunter, but also the bloody hunt and the sudden desolation that descends upon Jicun overnight, leaving the hearts of its people shattered. Hunting, felling, struggle, floods, landslides. Everything is so chaotic and raw. Yet, the search for a dwelling place in the ancient ballads is both thrilling and mysterious. Ten years after Dust Settles, A Lai's new novel is published, truly a case of "ten years of effort for one sword." A Lai's new work stands alongside Dust Settles as twin peaks in terms of artistic and ideological achievement. The structural art and grand design of the novel represent A Lai's new exploration in art, presenting a completely different style from Dust Settles. If Dust Settles is a closed structure with a complete story, the new work, in order to explore the major theme of "the secret history of a village," adopts a shared culture and background, with different people and events forming a three-dimensional contemporary Tibetan rural landscape. This is known as the "petal" structure. The author's attitude in "portraying the secret history of a village" is extremely clear. It is neither a single-ethnic narrative nor a pastoral or legendary one. The author has profound cultural, religious, natural, and social experiences with Tibetan villages. Calling it "secret history" does not mean disclosing its mysteries but rather revealing the ignored and numb pain through a special technique. It is precisely because of this that the novel achieves its grand scale. The major and solemn theme, the substantial and profound content, and the structure that the author wields at will, offer deeper reflections on human and nature, politics and culture, religion and society, harmony and progress. This is a powerful realist work filled with masculine beauty, sweeping away the current literary scene's,,.