介绍:
For many novelists, writing historical fiction is quite a challenge, since the fidelity of history must be shown while the story needs to be appealing to the readers of today. Particularly when you write about the past of other countries, the difficulties could not be greater.
But British writer Adam Williams is not afraid to make some bold moves and his engrossing China-themed trilogy is winning international acclaim.
So for today&`&s Bookshelf, let&`&s follow Doris Wang to check out his most celebrated saga: The Emperor&`&s Bones, or in Chinese, "Qianlong De Gutou".
Reporter:
What is the first thing that comes to your mind at the mention of the 1920s?
Gangsters and bootlegging? Or flappers in "The Great Gatsby"?
But China didn&`&t experience all those glamour of the Roaring Twenties. Trapped in a power struggle, the nation was nearly torn apart by warlords and military cliques, while the Japanese troops lurked in the northeast in hope of getting a piece of the country.
Besides the history textbooks, very few literature works, even written by Chinese writers, have tried to reexamine that period extensively. Therefore, focusing on 1920s China, British writer Adam Williams&`& novel "The Emperor&`&s Bones" is surely a rarity.
"The great thing about the 1920s is nobody knew what will happen. If you were taking a bet on the communist party in 1927, people would think you are mad. I mean they had been slaughtered in Guangzhou and Shanghai, they were running off to the mountains. How can they come to rule China? At the same time, with Japan slowly invading, how would the big Japanese Empire be defeated? Nobody would know. I think it was so full of ideas. The idea of nationalism was actually created in the 1920s. All the elements of China&`&s future are in those ten years, but it&`&s like a crucible, a sort of chemical experiment. So I thought that was a very good time to test all sort of difference in that chaos. It&`&s wonderful to have human stories."
Loosely based on the experience of his family, who lived in northern China during that period, the author creates an uneasy world similar to T.S. Eliot&`&s Wasteland. From the brutal battlefields of the Northern Expedition to the blood-soaked "Shanghai Massacre " of 1927, the novel follows the eventful and thrilling lives of two young women to wipe away the dust and cobwebs of those long-gone days.
"Women are often victims of historical events in a sense, but the virtues of women are often more compassionate ones. So for the theme of my book, because the book is about suffering and strength out of suffering, I think some of the feminine characteristics are much stronger. "
One of the protagonists is a feisty, enduring English woman named Catherine, who comes to China to find her father but gets caught in a love triangle with two brothers. Another key character is Catherine&`&s Oxford schoolmate Yu Fukui, a mistress of a warlord intelligence officer as well as an idealistic mole getting lost in the revolution of her country.
Occasionally, the paths of these two females would interlace together, but in most parts of the book, their fates and people around them are swept away in different directions. In that turbulent age, when love could be questionable and betrayal was regarded as routine, all those characters, whether fictional or not, were trying to find themselves and make changes, even though their endeavour or ambition always availed them naught.
Williams says he has no intention to profile paragon and stereotypical figures, but to showcase the complexity of humans without making any judgment.
"I intend not to find people are good or people are bad, because people tend to be both. Everybody has their reason for doing things. I mean nowadays in history textbooks, you have the sort of inevitable communist rise and the good people were communist revolutionaries and socialists of the time, the bad people were the nationalists. But it wasn&`&t so. You have idealists on every front. So I think it&`&s wonderful (that) in a novel, you don&`&t have to stand on this person&`&s side or that person&`&s side. "
Fast paced and tautly written, "The Emperor&`&s Bones" is a wondrous historical epic flavoured with adventure and romance and spiced with a dash of spy story. Thanks to its strikingly grand scenes, evocative language and richly illustrated characters, the book is hailed as the female version of "Doctor Zhivago" by the media.
But is the Chinese history portrayed in this book accurate or not?
The writer gives his answer.
"History is fantasy really, you can&`&t write real history. Every generation will interpret history in different way. You always interpret history according to the present. So actually when you&`&re writing history, you are writing world of today, our life and what it means. "
Published in fifteen languages, The Emperor&`&s Bones was the number one bestseller on Dangdang, China&`&s largest online bookstore.
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