Bøger af Ge Fei

Cui bor i Beijing, hvor alle gør hvad de kan for at hustle sig til succes i takt med, at deres forbrug af ligegyldige varer stiger. I omverdenens øjne er han en taber. Midt i 40’erne, skilt, barnløs og indlogeret hos sin søster – hvis mand er besat af at få ham smidt ud – i en lejlighed i udkanten af byen med en stor revne i væggen, som nordenvinden blæser igennem. Det eneste han virkelig bryder sig om er Beethoven og vintage højtalere, og han tjener til dagen og vejen ved at bygge tilpassede, gammeldags forstærkere til rige audio-fanatikere.En dag får han et tip fra en gammel ven om en speciel opgave: en mystisk mand der bor i en stor villa, og udstråler en slet skjult brutalitet, ønsker at få installeret “verdens bedste stereoanlæg”. Det er ikke en opgave uden ricisi, men hvis bare han ikke stiller for mange spørgsmål…Som du ved, lever jeg af at bygge rørforstærkere. Hvis man tæller sammen, er der højst tyve mennesker i Beijing der kalder det her deres levevej. Det er formentlig den mest uanselige branche i nutidens Kina. Det underlige er at selvom vi alle sammen kender hinanden, undgår vi for alt i verden at have noget med hinanden at gøre. Vi hverken undergraver eller promoverer hinanden og kommer aldrig med upassende kommentarer om hinandens evner. I stedet forsøger vi hver især at værne om den begrænsede kundekreds der opretholder vores eksistens. Langt de fleste i det her samfund er stort set uvidende om os. Men det er faktisk helt fint. Vi har også selv mere end god grund til at ignorere samfundet, skjule os i de mørke sprækker og finde tilfredsstillelse i vores usynlige liv.Ge Fei (Liu Yong) (1964), regnes for en af 80’erne og 90’ernes prominente forfattere inden for den eksperimenterende, kinesiske avantgarde fiktion. Flock of Brown Birds, Usynlighedskappen og den store Jiangnan-trilogi har alle fået en stor læserskare i Kina, og Ge Fei har bl.a. modtaget Lu Xun Litteraturpris i 2014 og Mao Dun-prisen for fiktion i 2015.

"A meditation on revolution, idealism, and utopia by one of China's greatest living novelists. In 1898, China experienced one hundred days of utopia, after a cabal of reformist intellectuals persuaded the young emperor to enact sweeping changes intended to modernize the country and bring about the "Great Unity." Their movement ended in blood and the crowning of two more dictators, but not before it whetted an appetite for revolution all across the country - an appetite that would eventually consume millions of lives. One such life belongs to Xiumi, the young daughter of a wealthy landowner and former government official who goes insane over a painting, then mysteriously disappears. Days later, Xiumi's mother welcomes to the estate a young man who carries a grand but brutal vision in his heart and a gold cicada in his pocket. When his plans collapse, Xiumi inherits his vision, just as she herself begins fighting the Confucian social mores that view women as property. On her wedding day, she becomes a pawn in a series of violent transactions carried out by men who think they are building paradise; as each one fails, she attempts to repay them in kind by spearheading a movement of her own. Her campaign for change is always a fight to win control of her own body; and the cost of even that is nearly total. Ge Fei's prize-winning novel intertwines myths of earthly perfection with a historical tale of revolution and hypocrisy, in which human agency must either be bartered for, or taken by force"--

In this avant garde masterpiece, memory is a fluid concept. The protagonist, a writer, is at a publisher-sponsored retreat to finish his novel. The beauty of the location however cannot compensate for the anxiety and hallucinations he experiences while watching a flock of brown birds pass by his window, and his sense of temporal disorientation is further compounded by the appearance of a strange woman who calls him Ge Fei. Fiction and reality blend into one as the story unfolds. Ge Fei's prose renders in exquisite detail the fragility of time.