Abandoned Capital
by Jia Pingwa
About This Novel
The most controversial work in the contemporary literary world, a strange book with mixed reviews. When the book came out in 1993, Mr. Ji Xianlin predicted that "Abandoned Capital" would shine brightly in 20 years. In 1997, he won the French Femina Literary Prize, the first time for an Asian writer to win this honor. In 2003, he won the Honorary Award for Literature and Art of the French Republic. This is a history of Chinese social customs in the 1980s, a worldly novel describing the life of contemporary intellectuals. The novel is based on the contemporary life of Xi'an, an ancient capital with a long history and culture. It describes the daily lives of the "four celebrities": the "idle scholar" writer Zhuang Zhidie, the calligrapher Gong Jingyuan, the painter Wang Ximian and the artist Ruan Zhifei, and shows a condensed and diverse "abandoned capital" landscape of Xijing. The author uses the emotional entanglement between Zhuang Zhidie and several women as the main line, and uses Ruan Zhifei and other celebrities to intersperse the narratives as the auxiliary line. Among the many women, Tang Wan'er, Liu Yue, and Niu Yueqing have created the most successful and lovable characters for him. These characters, who are full of spirituality, emotional intelligence and classical tragedy, embody the author's highest aesthetic ideal.
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