迟子建,女,山东海阳人,1964年2月生于黑龙江省漠河县。1990年毕业于北京师范大学。1984年在西北大学作家班、北京师范大学研究生班学习。中国作协第六、七届全委会委员,黑龙江省作家协会主席。1983年开始文学创作。著有长篇小说《额尔古纳河右岸》《白雪乌鸦》《群山之巅》,中篇小说《世界上所有的夜晚》等。曾三次获鲁迅文学奖,两次获冰心散文奖,并获茅盾文学奖、澳大利亚悬念句子文学奖等多种奖项。部分作品在英、法、日、意等国出版。
迟子建早期的作品空灵美丽,历经岁月之后,她的作品依旧美丽,多了包容,更显沧桑和力量。或是清新隽永,或是苍茫雄浑,或是跌宕曲折,迟子建的小说中一直不变的是关于温暖和爱的情怀。作家苏童以二十年容颜不变形容迟子建的创作力,她一直保持着不急不缓的创作节奏,漫步在对美和爱追求的道路上。
《额尔古纳河右岸》是一部描述中国东北少数民族鄂温克人百年生存状态的长篇小说。迟子建以部落里最后一位酋长的女人的口吻,诉说着沧桑动人的民族故事。鄂温克人数百年前自贝加尔湖迁徙至额尔古纳河右岸,与驯鹿相依为命。他们享受着自然的馈赠也经受着严寒、瘟疫的灾害,他们在日本侵华战争中遭受了践踏。然而,强大不屈的民族精神使他们与命运抗争,书写了整个民族的感天动地的生死传奇。迟子建在《世界上所有的夜晚》的开头这样说:“我想把脸涂上厚厚的泥巴,不让人看到我的哀伤。”小说讲述了女主人公在丈夫经历车祸去世后,独自远行,目睹苦难和不公的故事。世界上的夜晚是一个人的夜晚,也是所有人的夜晚。这部中篇小说是迟子建的泣血之作。《白雪乌鸦》讲述了1910年到1911年哈尔滨鼠疫爆发中傅家甸地区民众的生活。作为东北的一个小城区,经历了日俄战争,居住着中国人、俄罗斯人和日本人,文化融合渗透在日常生活中。突然而至的瘟疫,使全城陷入了恐慌的气氛。在死亡的重压之下,原本隐藏的爱怨情仇显现出来,小城人迸发出了生命的活力。
《群山之巅》是作家2015年出版的长篇小说,历时两年完成。小说讲述了地处中国北疆群山之巅的龙盏镇中的悲欢离合。小说聚焦于中国松山地区苍茫的边地民间,从一桩震惊全镇的杀人强奸案开始,到罪犯被执行死刑为止。围绕着这个核心事件,讲述了时代浪潮中辛家、安家、唐家三个家族的历史,展现了小人物如何在未知的命运路途中寻找出路,活出尊严。
迟子建
Chi Zijian
Chi Zijian, of Haiyang in the province of Shandong, was born in February, 1964 in Mohe County, Heilongjiang. She graduated with a postgraduate degree from Beijing Normal University in 1990, having previously studied creative writing at Northwest University, beginning in 1984. She was a member of the China Writers Association 6th and 7th committees, and is the serving chairwoman of the Heilongjiang Writers Association. Beginning her writing in 1983, Chi has penned such novels as The Right Bank of the Ergun River, White Snow Black Crows and Peak Among the Mountains, and shorter works such as All the Nights in the World. She is a three-time winner of the “Lu Xun Literature Award”, a two-time winner of the “Bing Xin Essay Award” and a recipient of such accolades as the “Mao Dun Literature Prize”,“the Suspended Sentence Fellowship” — a trilateral residency scheme organized by Ireland, China and Australia. A portion of her works has been published abroad, in such countries as the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Italy.
Chi’s early works had a certain free and natural beauty to them. With the passing of time, her writing — still just as beautiful — has come to contain so much more: forceful and imbued with the vicissitudes of life. Whether innovatory and insightful, vast and powerful, or full of twists and turns, Chi’s novels all share one common thread: a sentiment of love and warmth. With a creativity described by novelist Su Tong as “unchanging over 20 years”, Chi produces work at a pace that is never rushed nor slowed, as she treads her own path in search of beauty and love.
The Right Bank of the Ergun River is a novel describing the Ewenki ethnic minority of China’s northeast as they strove for survival over the centuries. In the book, Chi recounts the ethnic people’s tumultuous, moving story through another woman: wife of the last tribal chief. Their lives wholly reliant on reindeer, the Ewenki people emigrated many centuries ago from Lake Baikal to the eastern bank of the Ergun River. They reaped the offerings of the natural world, just as they weathered bitter cold and suffered disasters of pestilence. During the Japanese invasion, they were trampled upon all over. Yet imbued with the strength and resilience of their ethnicity’s spirit, they went to war with fate itself. Chi’s book is a documentation of the life-and-death legend of the entire Ewenki people.
In the introduction of All the Nights in the World, Chi wrote: “I want to smear my face thick with mud, so no-one can see my grief”. The novel recounts the independent travelling of its female protagonist following the death of her husband in a car crash, and the suffering and injustice she bears witness to. Night on earth is both one person’s night and everyone’s night. The novella is a work of “blood and tears”.
White Snow Black Crows, set in 1910-1911 during an outbreak of the plague, tells the story of the lives of those in Fujia, an area on the outskirts of the city of Harbin. As a small urban area in the country’s northeast that experienced the Soviet-Japanese conflict, Fujia was home to Chinese, Russian and Japanese people, the cultures of which melded and permeated throughout daily life. With the sudden outbreak of plague, the city descended into an environment of shear terror. Under the looming shadow of death, love and hatred that had previously been harboured in secrecy rose to the surface. City dwellers were bursting with the power of life.
After two years in the making, Chi published the novel Peak Among the Mountains in 2015. The book revolves around the tumultuous lives of the residents of Longzhan Town, perched among the peaks of a mountain range in China’s northern territories. The story focuses on those who live in the Mount Song area, in the country’s vast borderlands. Peak Among the Mountains begins with a rape and murder case that leaves the whole town reeling, and culminates with the offender’s execution. With this event at its core, the novel relates the family histories of three households — Xin, An and Tang — as they weather the waves of passing eras, and paints a picture of how ordinary people, walking towards unknown fates, find a way out towards a life of dignity.
2024-11-05
2024-11-04