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brnycx's review against another edition
1.0
this novel is a collection of four novellas loosely linked together. they tell the story of a mysterious chinese intelligence service working in the mountains, decrypting ciphers and codes as a matter of national importance. even better, it's written by "china's answer to john le carré"! sounds fun, right?
so, i was pretty excited when i picked it up, and it started off okay. and it stayed okay. and it ended okay. and that was it. it was basically the book equivalent of a flatline. i think the language has been poorly translated because it's rather clumsy, and the plot is pretty dull - it got to a point where i was so bored with it that i often dreaded picking the book back up again.
i have no idea where the le carré comparisons come from, either. le carré's novels are full of complex twists and turns, as duplicitous people work for duplicitous agencies. and through that there is a subtle (or often overt) criticism of said agencies, their agents, their shady actions, and even the concept of nationhood. so, of course, such a thing can't exist in a chinese book, which would have been censored by the chinese state before it even got to a printing press.
in the dark is what you get when you take an espionage thriller and minus the intrigue, plotting, and duplicity. oh, and the espionage.
so, i was pretty excited when i picked it up, and it started off okay. and it stayed okay. and it ended okay. and that was it. it was basically the book equivalent of a flatline. i think the language has been poorly translated because it's rather clumsy, and the plot is pretty dull - it got to a point where i was so bored with it that i often dreaded picking the book back up again.
i have no idea where the le carré comparisons come from, either. le carré's novels are full of complex twists and turns, as duplicitous people work for duplicitous agencies. and through that there is a subtle (or often overt) criticism of said agencies, their agents, their shady actions, and even the concept of nationhood. so, of course, such a thing can't exist in a chinese book, which would have been censored by the chinese state before it even got to a printing press.
in the dark is what you get when you take an espionage thriller and minus the intrigue, plotting, and duplicity. oh, and the espionage.
msaari's review against another edition
4.0
Lisää kiinalaista kryptoanalyysiä, Koodinmurtajan tapaan. Siinä missä Koodinmurtaja oli yhden ihmisen tarina ja enemmän romaanimainen, tämä kirja koostuu neljästä osasta, joista jokainen kertoo yhden poikkeuksellisen yksilön tarinan.
Kaikki tarinat liittyvät Koodinmurtajasta tuttuun erikoisyksikkö 701:een, joka on erikoistunut salakirjoituksiin ja niiden murtamiseen. Koodien murtamisen kanssa näissäkin painitaan ja kuvataan terävästi sitä, miten kryptoanalyysi on ala, joka puristaa ihmisestä irti kaiken, mitä irti on saatavissa.
Aika kiinalainen juttu tämäkin, epäilemättä länsimaisista kryptoanalyysin poikkeusyksilöistä kerrottaisiin vähän erilainen tarina (ja kerrotaankin, onhan se Turing-leffa nähty).
Kaikki tarinat liittyvät Koodinmurtajasta tuttuun erikoisyksikkö 701:een, joka on erikoistunut salakirjoituksiin ja niiden murtamiseen. Koodien murtamisen kanssa näissäkin painitaan ja kuvataan terävästi sitä, miten kryptoanalyysi on ala, joka puristaa ihmisestä irti kaiken, mitä irti on saatavissa.
Aika kiinalainen juttu tämäkin, epäilemättä länsimaisista kryptoanalyysin poikkeusyksilöistä kerrottaisiin vähän erilainen tarina (ja kerrotaankin, onhan se Turing-leffa nähty).
boyblue's review against another edition
2.0
This book has so much potential but really the whole book would be better marketed as a short story collection. There's no real link between each story. It's almost just a collection of 4 stories about people with variations of Asperger's syndrome. That's a pretty parsimonious description but may seem quite prescient once you've finished the book.
It is a strange novel. I picked it up for $2 at a book sale, written by the supposed "Chinese John le Carre" and best selling author in China. I got it in an attempt to further understand Chinese cultural differences, secondly, to see what stories people in China are reading these days and lastly because the blurb caught my eye. The novel was undermined by either a sub-par translator or the writer being unable to edit his own material. To compare it to other authors I would say it was like a combination of Haruki Murakami and John Le Carre but written by an unskilled high school student (that could have been a translation issue though). There's too many laboured details, things said over and over again in slightly different ways, repetition after repetition, description followed by a similar description, explanations of explanations, summaries of already summarised materials, like some long drawn out distillation process, a slow tedious simmering of material where you can't just have the final reduction you have to experience the reducing. Now you know what I'm talking about. I am however open to this strange writing style as a pastiche of the Chinese communist party way of writing. Potentially the writer is purposely writing in a bureaucratic fashion to emulate what the Chinese would recognise as the party line. The narrator is supposedly opening the vault on the mysterious Unit 701, though it's not made clear if he's writing a party report or just sharing the story with the general public.
On another note the genius component and magic parts of the story are well executed but lack the mesmerising quality other magic-realist authors like Murakami often endow their prose with, they also could have gone deeper. It's almost like there is a Chinese imperative to stick strictly to facts and to not delight too much in what verges on supernatural (even recognising the nature of the narrators recording purposes). As already mentioned the writing is too repetitive and laboured, it needs a Hemingway slap across the face.
Reading Chinese cliches, similes and metaphors is quite enjoyable but also very strange and at times almost opaque for a western reader. Take for example "There is a saying that some women are quite shrewish and some men toadying." Or what seems to be a classic Chinese proverb "you always save the best steel for knives". The second I can kind of understand but the first seems to need the cultural context of having grown up in China and it diminishes your appreciation of the text without that background. Contrast that to how easily a western audience digests the General Patton quote used towards the end. "There's only one proper way for a professional soldier to die: the last bullet of the last battle of the last war". It's so easy for a western audience to understand.
In saying all this you'll still be delighted by Abing, Huang Yiyi, Chen Erdu and a few of the others, you'll keep reading largely to find out what happens to these tortured geniuses. Unfortunately, the main characters are mostly interesting in contrast to the bland supporting cast and surrounding characters and you'll be worn down by the way the brutal regime celebrates them in the shadows.
There's a famous story that Mao's favourite book was a little known French novel. Whenever the French ambassadors went to China he would ask them about it and rave about how great it was. The ambassadors would be confused and on reading the original French version remain confused as it seemed like a pretty run of the mill story with a unimpressive and poorly aged prose style. In the end it turned out that the person who had translated the novel into Chinese was possibly one of the greatest Chinese writers of all time; he had taken this French novel and turned it into a masterpiece through translation. It may be with In The Dark that the opposite process has happened and what was a glowing piece of literature has, through translation, become a sputtering light.
It is a strange novel. I picked it up for $2 at a book sale, written by the supposed "Chinese John le Carre" and best selling author in China. I got it in an attempt to further understand Chinese cultural differences, secondly, to see what stories people in China are reading these days and lastly because the blurb caught my eye. The novel was undermined by either a sub-par translator or the writer being unable to edit his own material. To compare it to other authors I would say it was like a combination of Haruki Murakami and John Le Carre but written by an unskilled high school student (that could have been a translation issue though). There's too many laboured details, things said over and over again in slightly different ways, repetition after repetition, description followed by a similar description, explanations of explanations, summaries of already summarised materials, like some long drawn out distillation process, a slow tedious simmering of material where you can't just have the final reduction you have to experience the reducing. Now you know what I'm talking about. I am however open to this strange writing style as a pastiche of the Chinese communist party way of writing. Potentially the writer is purposely writing in a bureaucratic fashion to emulate what the Chinese would recognise as the party line. The narrator is supposedly opening the vault on the mysterious Unit 701, though it's not made clear if he's writing a party report or just sharing the story with the general public.
On another note the genius component and magic parts of the story are well executed but lack the mesmerising quality other magic-realist authors like Murakami often endow their prose with, they also could have gone deeper. It's almost like there is a Chinese imperative to stick strictly to facts and to not delight too much in what verges on supernatural (even recognising the nature of the narrators recording purposes). As already mentioned the writing is too repetitive and laboured, it needs a Hemingway slap across the face.
Reading Chinese cliches, similes and metaphors is quite enjoyable but also very strange and at times almost opaque for a western reader. Take for example "There is a saying that some women are quite shrewish and some men toadying." Or what seems to be a classic Chinese proverb "you always save the best steel for knives". The second I can kind of understand but the first seems to need the cultural context of having grown up in China and it diminishes your appreciation of the text without that background. Contrast that to how easily a western audience digests the General Patton quote used towards the end. "There's only one proper way for a professional soldier to die: the last bullet of the last battle of the last war". It's so easy for a western audience to understand.
In saying all this you'll still be delighted by Abing, Huang Yiyi, Chen Erdu and a few of the others, you'll keep reading largely to find out what happens to these tortured geniuses. Unfortunately, the main characters are mostly interesting in contrast to the bland supporting cast and surrounding characters and you'll be worn down by the way the brutal regime celebrates them in the shadows.
There's a famous story that Mao's favourite book was a little known French novel. Whenever the French ambassadors went to China he would ask them about it and rave about how great it was. The ambassadors would be confused and on reading the original French version remain confused as it seemed like a pretty run of the mill story with a unimpressive and poorly aged prose style. In the end it turned out that the person who had translated the novel into Chinese was possibly one of the greatest Chinese writers of all time; he had taken this French novel and turned it into a masterpiece through translation. It may be with In The Dark that the opposite process has happened and what was a glowing piece of literature has, through translation, become a sputtering light.
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