Orlando

Name: Orlando
ISBN: 9787532764068

弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙 / 任一鸣Shanghai Translation Publishing House · ChinaAug 2016

4.2

Word count: 146K words
Chapters: 8
ISBN: 9787532764068

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Summary

The story begins in the Elizabethan age of the sixteenth century and ends in 1928, the "present" in which Woolf laid down her pen—spanning four hundred years. Orlando is at first an innocent and beautiful noble youth who enters the court because he is favored by Queen Elizabeth. After King James ascends the throne, a great frost descends, and Orlando meets a Russian princess by chance and falls in love, only to lose both his love and his favor and retreat to a country mansion. Orlando has been enamored of literature and poetry since childhood; the figure of Shakespeare lingers in his mind, and he manages to become acquainted with the minor poet Greene, only to be mocked again. Unable to endure the importunities of a Romanian archduchess, he asks to be sent on a mission to Turkey. After a great fire in Constantinople, Orlando becomes a woman, leaves official life, and mingles among the Gypsies. Later she returns to England and becomes a grande dame of high society, befriending a group of famous literary figures of the time. Entering the Victorian age, in order to continue writing, Orlando can only compromise with the spirit of the age and marries a sea captain. By the end of the story, Orlando is a prize-winning poet of the twentieth century, returning to the great house that runs through the whole book and symbolizes tradition, coming beneath the great oak tree and reviewing her eternal pursuit of literature and poetry.

Editor's review

Virginia Woolf's Orlando is an avant-garde work that transcends its era, using a fantastical journey across four hundred years and across genders to explore the nature of identity, time, and art. This edition from Shanghai Translation Publishing House has a fluent translation that does a good job of reproducing Woolf's lively, poetic, and slightly playful prose style. As a novel labeled "feminist" and "gender-fluid," its core is far richer than such labels—it is a splendid rebellion against literary tradition, a questioning of the "certainty" of historical writing, and a poetic deconstruction of the concept of the "self." Through the extraordinary premise of Orlando transforming from an Elizabethan noble youth into a Victorian woman writer, Woolf subtly dissolves the fixed limits of gender, class, and era. While reading, you can feel not only the immersive psychological landscape created by the stream-of-consciousness technique but also the author's profound reflections on the relationship between literature and history. The value of this book lies in the fact that it does not provide an answer but opens a door, inviting readers to reexamine the definitions of life and creation that we take for granted.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers with a deep interest in gender issues and identity
Literature lovers who wish to experience the unique charm of stream-of-consciousness literature
Readers who enjoy narratives interweaving history and fiction and full of whimsical imagination
Those engaged in literary and artistic creation who hope to draw inspiration and reflection from it

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking strong plot and fast-paced narrative
Readers expecting clear conclusions or realistic subject matter

Reading tips

Let go of expectations of traditional linear narrative and follow the flow of Woolf's poetic consciousness to feel the elasticity of time.
You may read it in light of Woolf's life and feminist views, but need not be confined to a single interpretive framework.
When reading chapters set in different eras, pay attention to the subtle interplay between Orlando's identity transformations and the spirit of the age and literary fashions.

About the publisher

Shanghai Translation Publishing House China · Founded in 1978

Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.

版权信息
译本序
第一章
第二章
第三章
第四章
第五章
第六章

FAQ

Is this book a purely feminist novel?

It is often regarded as a feminist classic, but its meaning goes far beyond that. Its more central exploration concerns the fluidity of the self, time, art, and history, and the gender transformation is a brilliant vehicle for exploring these themes.

Does the stream-of-consciousness style make reading difficult?

Compared with Mrs Dalloway or To the Lighthouse, Orlando has a clearer timeline and character trajectory, and its use of stream of consciousness serves the portrayal of characters' inner lives and the atmosphere of the age. It is relatively readable and a good starting point for approaching Woolf's style.

Does the book's historical background require a lot of prior knowledge?

No specialized historical knowledge is needed. Woolf sketches several key slices of English history from the Renaissance to the modern era with parody and poetic strokes; her aim is to present the spirit of the age rather than historical detail, and readers can fully immerse themselves in the story itself.

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About the author

弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙 Author

Virginia Woolf is a major twentieth-century British novelist and essayist, known for her stream-of-consciousness technique and her acute writing on women's lives. The collection holds eleven of her works, including novels such as To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, The Waves, Orlando, Night and Day, and Jacob's Room, as well as critical writing like The Common Reader and the imaginative biographical work Flush. Her writing is distinguished by delicate psychological description and poetic language, and she continually experimented with narrative structure, attending to time, memory, gender, and individual inner experience. Her works appear in both foreign literature and inspirational-growth categories, and she has had a profound influence on modernist fiction and later women's writing. Public information on her nationality, dates, and education is limited, so no speculation is offered here.

任一鸣 Author

REN Yiming: publicly available information is limited, and details of the author's identity and life remain to be verified. Judging from the three works held in the library, the author's focus is on foreign literature, particularly the study and translation of English literature. The representative works include Orlando and A Study of Twentieth-Century British Women Writers. The former is presumably a translation of, or commentary on, Virginia Woolf's classic novel, while the latter indicates a systematic survey of twentieth-century British women writers. Commonly classified under foreign literature and literary appreciation, the works suggest that the author combines academic research with textual appreciation, attending both to close reading and to the tradition of women's writing and literary history. Overall, REN Yiming's writings reflect a sustained interest in English literature, especially the work of women writers, and may be of value to readers interested in foreign literature and the study of women's writing.