The Message

Mai JiaShanghai Literature and Art Publishing House2020

Rating 4.2
Word count
247K words
Chapters
4
ISBN
9787532177721

Tags

Featured Fiction Mystery and Suspense Underground WorkClosed SpacePsychological GameEspionageBeliefChamber NarrativeFull-Length NovelContemporary Chinese Literature

Summary

The Message is a major novel by Mai Jia, first published in full in People's Literature in 2007, where it won the magazine's Best Novel of the Year award; Mai Jia himself received the Chinese Literature Media Award for Novelist of the Year for the book. His other novel, Plot Against, won the 7th Mao Dun Literature Prize. The novel is set in Hangzhou in 1941, during the Japanese puppet regime. The Qiu Villa by West Lake, once a place of song and dance, has become an interrogation site cut off from the outside world: five key military officials of the Wang Jingwei government are imprisoned there, and one of them is a CCP underground operative codenamed "Old Ghost." The Japanese and the puppet secret services conclude that intelligence has leaked and must identify this person within a limited time; the intelligence concerns the survival of the Hangzhou underground organization and must be gotten out. The book consists of three parts—"Part One: East Wind," "Part Two: West Wind," and "Outside: Still Wind"—in which the same Qiu Villa mystery is recounted and contested by different parties, and the reader keeps revising his judgment of the truth as versions pile up—who is lying, and who is trading his life to get the intelligence out, becomes the novel's core suspense. Mai Jia writes the psychological contest in a closed space with a cool brush, turning espionage into an extreme confrontation of intelligence and will, and beneath the tense narrative asks about the weight of faith, duty, and sacrifice. This entry corresponds to the 2020 newly revised edition produced by Dook Culture (Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House), which contains 717 new revisions, an author's essay on the writing, and original illustrations, totaling about 247,000 characters.

Editor's review

很多人是先看了电影《风声》，才回头读小说的；而读完小说的人几乎都会承认：原著的信息密度和结构巧思，是影像难以完全替代的。麦家把故事的场地收拢在西子湖畔的一座裘庄里，几个人被关在同一栋楼里互相试探、彼此构陷，审讯桌就是战场，一句谎言、一枚药片、一件内衣都可能决定生死。 真正让这本书有意思的，是它的三重讲述结构。“东风”是一次似乎完整的侦破，“西风”却把前文的“真相”整个掀开；“静风”再退到更远处，用近乎考据的笔调复盘。读者读到中途会忽然意识到：自己以为读到的历史，其实是某个讲述者希望你相信的版本，而这种不可靠的讲述，恰好就是麦家想谈的东西。 这个修订版新增了数百处改动和作者自述创作缘起的文章，把当年写这本书时的孤独与绝境摊开在读者面前。读悬疑小说可以只图紧张痛快，但《风声》值得多读一层：那些在黑暗里守住一个身份、一份使命的人，究竟靠什么撑住。

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Reading tips

  1. 先不带预设读完“东风”，读“西风”时再回到前文，重看那些被略过或被误导的细节。
  2. 注意区分每一部分是谁在讲述，用纸笔记下叙述者的立场，会更容易看清结构的用心。
  3. 读完后可对照同名电影，比较银幕对李宁玉、顾小梦等人物关系的简化与改写。
  4. 若时间紧张，可把“静风”留到第二次阅读时再细读，它更像作者的复盘与自辩。

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.

Contents

  1. Part One East Wind
  2. Part Two West Wind
  3. Outside Still Wind
  4. Afterword: The Whispers About The Message

FAQ

《风声》和电影《风声》差别大吗？ 差别不小。电影由周迅、李冰冰、张涵予、黄晓明主演，强调了人物关系和视觉化的审讯场面；小说结构更复杂，分成东风、西风、静风三部分，同一事件被不同人反复讲述，重点在于叙事本身如何制造“真相”。
没读过麦家的其他作品能直接读吗？ 可以。《风声》情节独立，与《解密》《暗算》没有阅读顺序上的约束，只需了解故事发生在1941年汪伪政权时期的杭州即可进入。
这本书适合中学生读吗？ 文字本身不难，结构上的层层反转反而能锻炼阅读耐心与思辨能力；但书中涉及刑讯和死亡场面，年龄较小的读者建议由老师或家长略作引导与讨论后再读。
新版和老版有什么区别？ 2020年读客版经作者全新修订，新增717处修订，并附有万字创作谈和原创插画，全书约24.7万字，是目前市面上较容易买到、内容最完善的版本之一。
书里有没有真实的史料依据？ 小说是虚构作品，主要依托1941年汪伪统治下杭州的时代氛围展开想象；第三部分“静风”刻意模仿考据与回忆录的笔调，制造“真假难辨”的效果，读者不宜把它当作史料阅读。

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About the author

Mai Jia Author

Mai Jia is a contemporary Chinese writer. Publicly available information about him is limited, and his nationality and dates of birth and death are not clearly recorded. Four of his works are included in this collection, with representative titles such as The Message, Selected Works of Mai Jia, and The Old House. His works are commonly classified under quality fiction, mystery and detective fiction, literature, classical literature, and documentary literature. These works suggest that Mai Jia's writing often centers on suspense and deduction, with carefully designed plots and a tense atmosphere; he is skilled at advancing the narrative through layers of mystery while combining literary quality with readability. His writing creates a distinctive tension between genre fiction and serious literature, drawing sustained reader attention and offering a noteworthy example for Chinese mystery and detective fiction.