The Age of Unreason is a major novel by Japanese author Hideo Okuda. The original Japanese edition, Muri, was published in 2009; the simplified Chinese edition, translated by Cao Yibing, was released by Nanhai Publishing Company in August 2018 as part of the "Shin Classic Library · Okuda Hideo Works" series. The story is set in the fictional Japanese provincial town of Yumeno: population 120,000, formed by merging three towns, with a stagnant economy, sharply declining job opportunities, a high proportion of junior-high-school-only graduates, many single-parent families, growing numbers of elderly people living alone and low-income groups, and a crime rate that has doubled in the past decade. In this town with no visible hope, five people with no prior connection to one another each struggle in their own way: Aihara Tomonori, a social welfare civil servant desperate for a transfer, wears himself down daily in the petty details and coldness of welfare eligibility reviews; Kubo Shie, a high school girl who dreams of life in Tokyo and is preparing for university entrance exams, longs only to get to a big city; Kato Yuya scrapes by on door-to-door sales and buying and reselling goods; Horibe Taeko works as a supermarket security guard and lives in straitened circumstances; and city council member Yamamoto Junichi schemes to win a seat in the prefectural assembly. The novel employs a multi-strand parallel narrative, with all threads converging near the end at a major traffic accident at a crossroads: a huge dump truck rear-ends a sedan, and car after car crashes into the pileup, black smoke billowing, as all the characters' fates are brutally twisted together in that instant. Okuda writes in a light, even comic tone about ordinary people's embarrassment, calculation, and self-deception as the times decline, asking "in an age that makes no sense, how much value is left in individual effort."
这是一本读起来“好笑”，合上书却让人沉默的小说。奥田英朗最擅长写市井小人物，他把五个身份、处境完全不同的人摆在同一个衰败的小城里，让他们各自做着“出人头地”的梦，再让一场车祸把所有线索撞到一起。结构是精巧的，笔调是轻松的，可轻松之下是无法回避的现实：福利制度在窗口一层层磨损，底层人靠不住任何保障，年轻人把离开当作唯一的出路，而所谓“体面生活”越来越需要用道德去交换。 如果你读过奥田英朗的“精神科的故事”系列，会知道他惯用荒诞和幽默包裹人的困境；《无理时代》则把这套笔法放到了更沉重、更社会性的题材上，被不少读者称为“致郁系”作品。中文版译文流畅，519页的篇幅读起来并不吃力，多线并行的写法让每一章都留有悬念。它不是那种给出答案的书，但它提供的镜子相当清晰——书里的“梦野城”是虚构的，可那种无力感，很多读者都会觉得熟悉。
Nanhai Publication Company is a comprehensive publisher known for its literature and arts titles, covering fields such as classical poetry, martial arts fiction, and folk literature. Judging from the more than 1,600 books in the database, the company has released classical poetic works including the Nineteen Old Poems and the Nine Songs, as well as multiple volumes of Huanzhulouzhu's series The Swordsmen of Mount Shu, along with related writings by authors such as Guan Hanqing, Qu Yuan, Zuo Si, and Wang Zhihuan. Its publishing character lies in balancing the organization of classic texts with the dissemination of popular literature, placing poetry anthologies alongside long martial arts novels and presenting a relatively diverse literary profile. Public information is limited, and further details about its editorial practices and series planning remain to be supplemented.
