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 "sword forged over ten years." A Lai's new work stands as twin peaks of artistic thought alongside When Dust Settles. The structural art and grand design of the novel represent A Lai's new artistic exploration, 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 explore the major theme of "the secret history of a village," adopts a shared culture and background, weaving together different people and events to create a three-dimensional contemporary Tibetan rural landscape. This is known as the "petal-like" structural approach. The author's attitude in "portraying 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 a special technique to reveal the ignored and numb pain. 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 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.