Kuang Chaoren

Name: Kuang Chaoren
ISBN: 9787532176205

骆以军Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House · ChinaSep 2020

3.9

Word count: 271K words
Chapters: 23
ISBN: 9787532176205

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Summary

Kuang Chao-jen is the next creative peak of heavyweight Taiwanese novelist Luo Yijun after Western Xia Hotel and Daughter. With unbridled imagination and a prose style as dazzling and playful as scattered flowers, the author uses collage, fusion, and pastiche of elements such as the initially unruly Sun Wukong from Journey to the West who ultimately becomes ordinary, and the scheming, petty literati figures from The Scholars, to construct a strange fictional world riddled with holes and black holes. In a densely sorrowful tone, he writes out the various existence postures of contemporary intellectuals—as if preprogrammed, ugly, ludicrous, struggling desperately yet powerless to escape.

Editor's review

Luo Yijun's Kuang Chao-jen is a complex text of great literary ambition and experimental spirit. It is not a novel in the traditional sense, but rather a narrative labyrinth unfolding in a contemporary context with the Journey to the West figure Kuang Chao-jen as its lead-in. Through the Taipei urban lives of 'I' and fictional characters such as 'Dawei,' along with surreal images running throughout—'the salmon returns home,' 'the meteorite falls'—the novel weaves an apocalyptic vision of lost identity, disintegrating memory, and civilizational ruins. With his signature dense, gorgeous, even slightly bloated narrative language, Luo Yijun fuses private experience, literary allusion, internet fragments, and philosophical speculation into a sensory world of information overload and constantly collapsing meaning. The book's value lies in its powerful diagnosis of the times—it precisely captures the existential anxiety of human beings in the digital age, the disintegration of subjectivity, and the predicament of narrative itself. Yet its jumpy structure, abundant intertextuality, and private, whispered expressions also pose considerable challenges to the reader's patience and store of knowledge. It is a work that demands 'wrestling' rather than 'browsing'; its charm and obscurity are two sides of the same coin.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Veteran readers with a strong interest in cutting-edge narrative experiments in contemporary Chinese-language literature
Literary enthusiasts fascinated by complex textual structures and skilled at, and enjoy, interpreting literary metaphors and intertextuality
Thinkers concerned with issues of individual identity, memory, and existential conditions in postmodern society
Longtime followers of Luo Yijun's work who wish to delve deeper into his literary universe

Not a good fit for

Traditional fiction readers seeking clear plots and explicit themes
Beginner readers new to literary fiction or with limited patience for demanding reading

Reading tips

It is suggested to temporarily set aside expectations of a linear story and focus instead on the density of language, the impact of images, and shifts in emotional atmosphere.
It can be read as a 'book of voices'; follow the flow of the narrator's consciousness without insisting on immediately understanding every reference and allusion.
After reading, consulting interviews with Luo Yijun about his creative process or other commentary may help open up more dimensions for understanding the work.

About the publisher

Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House China · Founded in 1952

Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House takes modern and contemporary Chinese literature and folk literature as important publishing directions, while also covering social novels, classic works, and prose and miscellaneous writings, and has long introduced foreign literature and philosophical works. Its books include masterpieces such as Lao She's Teahouse and Camel Xiangzi, Lu Xun's Call to Arms and Wandering and Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, and Xiao Hong's Tales of Hulan River, as well as translations such as Gilles Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Pillars of the Earth trilogy. Its authors include Lao She, Lu Xun, Xiao Hong, Zhou Ying, Liu Yuyu, and Jiang Yi, reflecting a publishing character that balances original literature, academic translation, and general reading.

版权信息
洞的故事 ——阅读《匡超人》的三种方法
俄罗斯餐厅
哲生
开心玩大陆
美猴王
破鸡鸡超人
大小姐
老派与老Y
粉彩
超人们
在酒楼上
寻仇
阿默
谁来晚餐
我骑着摩托车载着他
刺激
砍头
藏在阁楼上的女孩
吃猴脑
破鸡鸡超人大战美猴王
冰封
我曾去过这些地方

FAQ

What is the relationship between Kuang Chao-jen and the Kuang Chao-jen in Journey to the West?

This book is not a direct rewriting of the Journey to the West character. Luo Yijun borrows the name 'Kuang Chao-jen' more as a cultural symbol and narrative thread to explore contemporary people's fantasies of the 'superman' and their sense of powerlessness to 'rectify' themselves in reality; the two form an ironic dialogue at the level of spiritual core.

Why does this book feel so fragmented and difficult to read?

This 'fragmentation' is a deliberate narrative strategy. It aims to simulate the contemporary experience of information explosion, scattered attention, and fragmented meaning. The text's leaps, collage, and stream-of-consciousness techniques are themselves part of what it seeks to express; the difficulty of reading is precisely the necessary path into its core concerns.

How should one evaluate this book's place in Luo Yijun's career?

Kuang Chao-jen is widely regarded as a culminating and highly breakthrough work in Luo Yijun's creative trajectory. It continues the deep excavation of history, trauma, and narrative found in predecessors such as Western Xia Hotel, but goes further and more thoroughly in linguistic experimentation and structural exploration, confronting the present 'now' more directly and displaying the latest facet of his fiction aesthetics.

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About the author

骆以军 Author

Luo Yijun is a Chinese-language fiction writer. The library currently holds two of his works, Kuang Chaoren and Story Convenience Store. Publicly available information about his nationality, dates of birth and death, education and writing career is limited, so no inferences are made here. That his works are classified as social fiction suggests that his writing pays attention to social reality and the human condition, with narratives unfolding between everyday life and imagination and marked by strong storytelling and readability. Kuang Chaoren uses its title character to explore contemporary human nature, while Story Convenience Store presents fragments and observations of life in the form of short stories. Though the two works differ in subject and scale, together they show his continuing interest in social issues through fictional narrative.