The History of the Adventures of Vivi and Vera

Dung Kai-cheung (董啟章) was born in Hong Kong in 1967 and received his B.A. and M.Phil. in comparative literature from the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of more than twenty books in Chinese, mainly fiction. He has won numerous literary awards, including the Unitas Fiction Writing Award for New Writers, the United Daily News Literary Award for the Novel, the Award for Best Artist (Literary Arts) in 2007/2008 from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and Author of the Year of the Hong Kong Book Fair in 2014. His first work translated into English, Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, won the Best Translated Work Award at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards (2013). An English translation of his work, Cantonese Love Stories, was published last year by Penguin China.Yau Wai-ping is Associate Professor of Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University. In addition to translations of Chinese fiction and poetry, he has published widely on Chinese cinema, including works on Wong Kar-wai and Pema Tseden.

出版者:East Slope Publishing Ltd. (Muse, HK)

作者:Dung Kai-cheung

页数:508

译者:Yau Wai-ping

出版时间:2018-6

价格:HK$150

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9789881604767

图书标签:香港董啟章novel2000s

Award-winning author Dung Kai-cheung weaves together two inventive narratives in this remarkable book. One is the story of a novelist who recounts his family’s history against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s development from the 1930s to the 1990s. Dung builds this story through vignettes about the protagonist’s relationship with technological inventions that shaped his life, as glimpsed through his uncertain memory and family myths. Running parallel to this is a rebellion by the novelist’s oppressed fictional characters, who attempt to break the yoke of servile obedience laid upon them by the conventions of novel-writing. The central character, Vivi, has been written into being by the author and, once created, she seems to take on a life of her own and moves from being fabricated to being real, even bravely undertaking the journey to meet her creator—the novelist—in the real world. Fantasy and realism combine to suggest that crossing boundaries is inherent part of our nature.

Praise for The History of the Adventures of Vivi and Vera

“Dung Kai-cheung is the most important writer of contemporary Hong Kong. Since the end of the last century, his work has constituted an alternative history of Hong Kong: the city’s splendor and dilemma, its fantastic metamorphoses and uncanny fate. The History of the Adventures of Vivi and Vera represents Dung at his best. The novel chronicles the changes and continuities of Hong Kong in the final decades of colonial rule, and projects a futuristic vision in which postcolonial nostalgia meets postmodernist fantasia, and family romance begets science fantasy. Above all, Dung seeks to inscribe Hong Kong as fiction, and celebrate the power of creativity that is Hong Kong.”

—David Der-wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University

“Dung Kai-cheung is Hong Kong’s most prolific and innovative contemporary novelist. His work is at once playful and challenging, brilliant and imaginative, and filled with a sense of mystery and discovery. The first volume in Dung’s acclaimed ‘Natural History’ trilogy, The History of the Adventures of Vivi and Vera is nothing short of a qishu, or ‘book of wonder.’ Freely navigating different times and spaces, people and objects, autobiographies and fictions, Dung Kai-cheung has written a new allegory for our troubled times.”

—Michael Berry, Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at UCLA, author of Speaking in Images and A History of Pain

读后感

蓋上董啟章所寫的〈天工開物‧詡詡如真〉的最後一頁，心頭頓時泛起絲絲的顫動。這是溫柔的，和喣的，滿足的，頓悟的，含蓄的，最底蘊的，充滿著愛的心弦撩動。請恕我詞窮，或者再用更多的修詞都未能準確形容這種感覺，因為這可說是純粹個人化的撩動，默默為我編織出個人的歷...  

一种小说技巧总与小说家的哲学观点相关联，要评价一部小说就要在评价小说家的技巧之前首先找出他的哲学观点，但我找不到，没法基于一部作品，甚至仅仅是一部三部曲著作里面的一本，来确切捉摸董启章的哲学意图。 时间是哲学的基本范畴，小说家的哲学观点既然体现在他的技巧上...  

這是筆者第一次讀董啟章的小說，董啟章說故事的能力，確有吸引人之處，起碼筆者便一口氣在工作之餘，將全部小說讀完（近年除了推理小說外，已沒有很多書能有此吸引力）。書是看完後，但要如何總結這次體驗呢？ 「天工開物　栩栩如真」是一部對香港發展史的個人感想記錄，但那...  

其实我真的是在读《天工开物》，只是我读的是董启章。几乎没有接触过香港当代作家的作品，纯粹是冲着敖小姐的推荐，加上侧封上各种晃眼的“殊荣”——“亚洲周刊中文十大好书”“联合报读书人最佳书奖”“中国时报十大好书”“自然史三部曲两夺红楼梦奖决审团奖”！是的...  

一种小说技巧总与小说家的哲学观点相关联，要评价一部小说就要在评价小说家的技巧之前首先找出他的哲学观点，但我找不到，没法基于一部作品，甚至仅仅是一部三部曲著作里面的一本，来确切捉摸董启章的哲学意图。 时间是哲学的基本范畴，小说家的哲学观点既然体现在他的技巧上...