People in the Clouds

路内People's Literature Publishing House2018

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Chapters
35
ISBN
9787020132157

Tags

Foreign Literature SuspenseComing of AgeContemporary FictionFull-Length NovelContemporary Chinese LiteratureChinese LiteratureYouth

Summary

People in the Clouds is writer Lu Nei's first novel with a suspense element. It was first published in Harvest, 2011, No. 3, and first published in book form by Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House in 2012, with a new edition by People's Literature Publishing House in 2018. The story takes place at a third-rate university at the beginning of this century: Xia Xiaofan, a computer major at a vocational college, is about to graduate but cannot forget an unnamed senior schoolmate with whom he had a one-night affair in his freshman year. She was said to have been killed on a dark road by a blow to the head from an object; the murderer was brought to justice, but the truth was never resolved. Three years later, similar cases appear again, and panic spreads on campus. A younger schoolmate, Bai Xiaowei, is followed by a cross-eyed man and soon goes missing; her past in the sex trade and her history with Xia Xiaofan make it impossible for him to call the police, so he sets out alone to find her. A schizophrenic waiter in a coffee shop, a grocery store owner whose skull was broken by a hammer and whose development stopped, a job-seeking girl who dies because of a cat—one stranger or acquaintance after another passes away, and Xia Xiaofan is still on the road chasing the killer. Lu Nei places a youth with no way out and an excess of hormones amid the chaos and disorder of social transformation, using internet cafes, coffee shops, demolished old apartment buildings, and recurrent night rain to connect events into a "Möbius strip." This volume is the complete novel.

Editor's review

这不是一本靠“找出凶手”取悦读者的推理小说。路内最初想写探案故事，动笔后却主动放弃了这条路，因为他觉得那样写“太软弱”。他把重心放在一个以主人公为圆心的“场”上：夏小凡在毕业即失业的边缘游荡，室友四散挣扎，学校周边的咖啡店、网吧不断更替，旧居民楼被推倒又重建，一起又一起忽然而至的敲头案像钉子一样钉进这段生活。阴郁而优美的语言，诡异却讲得极有分寸的情节，加上蓝屏、都市废墟、猫与雨这些反复出现的意象，让整本书读起来像在夜里走一条没有尽头的路。越到后面越荒诞，也越到后面越让人惊心地察觉它的真实。路内凭《少年巴比伦》《花街往事》《慈悲》等作品被评论界视为“70一代最好的小说家”之一，本书是他把青春叙事推到存在主义层面的关键一步。喜欢《雾行者》《慈悲》的读者，会在这本更早的作品里看到他后来所有主题的雏形。

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Reading tips

  1. 把敲头案当作线索而非谜题，跟着夏小凡的视线走，不必急于猜凶手
  2. 留意反复出现的意象：蓝屏、猫、雨、废墟、莉莉卡，它们是理解结构的关键
  3. 读完后可对照《少年巴比伦》《慈悲》，看路内如何从青春写到时代
  4. 本书氛围阴郁，建议留出连续阅读时间，避免碎片化跳读消解悬念

About the publisher

People's Literature Publishing House China · Founded in 1951

People's Literature Publishing House publishes across classical literature, foreign literature, documentary writing and folk literature, with 492 titles in its catalogue. Representative books range from the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms to Lao She's Teahouse and Longxu Ditch in the Selected Works of Lao She, as well as translated foreign literature such as Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Dante's Divine Comedy and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, alongside documentary and fictional works including Primo Levi's If This Is a Man and João Guimarães Rosa's The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. Its authors include Chinese writers such as Lao She, translators such as Shen Emeri and Li Wenjun, and foreign authors such as James Wood. Overall, the house has a strong record in editing classic works and translating foreign literature, with a publishing character that bridges Chinese and foreign writing and values textual quality.

Contents

  1. Ruins
  2. D-Cup, Cross-Eyed, Convenience Store
  3. The Girl Who Appears Only Once
  4. LUSH
  5. The Venture Capital Prince's Startup History
  6. LILICA
  7. The Cats
  8. Meaningless Moments
  9. LILICA: The Final Chapter
  10. The Coffee Shop Girl
  11. Blue Screen
  12. About Xiaobai
  13. The Cat Eater
  14. The Head-Bashing Killer Strikes Again!
  15. About the Most Terrifying Thing in Life
  16. Band D
  17. Warehouse District
  18. Battle with the Renovation Workers
  19. Interlude
  20. Setting Out to Find Xiaobai
  21. The Interview
  22. Canada Goldenrod
  23. Perverted Memory
  24. Qina, Part Two
  25. Between the Darkness of the World and the Darkness Within
  26. Well
  27. The Metamorphosis of BUG Man
  28. Say Goodbye After the Shower
  29. The Card Game
  30. Graduation
  31. The Last Seven Days
  32. One Worrier Remains
  33. Re-entering the Ruined City
  34. We Will Meet Again
  35. Ending Where It Began

FAQ

《云中人》是推理小说吗？ 它带有悬疑和凶案线索，但路内本人放弃了写成探案小说的路子。书的核心不是揭晓凶手，而是借追查失踪与死亡，写一代人在社会转型中的迷惘、恐惧与无处安放的青春。
《云中人》有几个中文版本？ 主要有两个中文版本：2012年浙江文艺出版社版，ISBN 9787533932909；2018年人民文学出版社再版，ISBN 9787020132157。两版正文内容一致。
没有读过路内的作品，可以直接读这本吗？ 可以。本书独立成篇，不需要前置阅读。但它比《少年巴比伦》更阴郁、结构更迷宫化，若想先适应路内的语言风格，也可以从《慈悲》或《少年巴比伦》入手。
书名“云中人”是什么意思？ “云中人”可理解为悬在半空、无所归依的人：既指故事里那些在社会转型中失重、失去方向的年轻人，也呼应了小说迷宫式的结构与飘忽不定的叙述视角。

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About the author

路内 Author

Lu Nei is a novelist active in contemporary Chinese literature. Public information about him is currently limited; what can be confirmed is that two of his works are available, The Past of Flower Street and The Seventeen-Year-Old Light Cavalryman, commonly classified as social fiction. Judging from these two works, Lu Nei's writing tends to center on ordinary people in city streets and alleys, focusing on the situations of characters caught where youthful growth intersects with social change. His touch carries a nostalgic air of looking back on past events, while also offering observations of real life. His narratives often present characters' emotions and fates through everyday details, in plain yet textured language, and he is good at approaching serious social issues from a light-cavalryman-like observer's perspective. Although material about the author's own life remains insufficient, on the strength of the existing works alone, Lu Nei already shows a fairly consistent choice of subject matter and narrative style, and his fiction holds a certain appeal for readers concerned with social reality.