Back to 80: My literary life.

Chapter 579 578 Lu Yao wants to write a political novel
After Fang Minghua arranged the work, he went to the next room and met Lu Yao.

"Brother Lu, what do you want to talk to me about?"

Lu Yao hesitated for a moment before speaking: "Actually, it's nothing important. I want to ask you, what do you think about the disintegration of the Soviet Union?"

Fang Minghua was stunned for a moment, but still spoke.

"Of course this is a big event, which will profoundly change the current world political landscape. As for the reasons for the disintegration, there are long-term rigid economic system and highly centralized political system, wrong ethnic policies, Western countries' implementation of the "peaceful evolution" strategy, etc. These things were mentioned in the study documents issued by the leaders of our Writers Association at the meeting yesterday. Why are you suddenly asking this again today?"

"It was discussed at the meeting. I also read a lot of news reports about this. You know what? When I read this news in the newspaper, I couldn't sleep all night. A country that once produced great writers such as Gorky, Sholokhov, and Bunin disappeared just like that?"

"Well, the collapse of the Soviet Union has little to do with literature. Russian literature is already very powerful. Before the Soviet Union, great writers such as Tolstoy, Chekhov and Pushkin were born," Fang Minghua explained.

"Yeah. That's true." Lu Yao suddenly changed the subject and lowered his voice: "Hey, do you know? Qin Bei, several old cadres have had accidents, their wives and children have been separated, and their families have collapsed."

"I've heard of it, what's wrong?"

"The disintegration of the Soviet Union reminded me of the collapse of several veteran cadres' families. I plan to write a novel, starting with these families, exploring the relationship between life, family, and politics, analyzing the fate of a country, and writing a novel called "Collapse." Lu Yao finally said.

"Brother Lu, this is a political novel." Fang Minghua said with a smile.

"Yes, I want to try it. I have been thinking about this problem for the past two days."

"Of course, but a seminar for the reading class members will be held soon. You are one of the members and cannot be absent." Fang Minghua wanted to remind him.

"Don't worry, I won't. I'm just starting to think about it now, and it's still too early to actually write."

The two chatted for a while, mainly Fang Minghua listening to Lu Yao's ideas for the new novel. Fang Minghua suddenly felt that it was a bit like "The Sheep's Gate" written by Li Peifu.

"The Sheep's Gate" describes the image of Hu Tiancheng, the head of Hujiabao who has remained standing for forty years.

His courage in successfully controlling the villagers was closely linked to his foresight in managing the "human field"; he spent forty years building a huge network of relationships from townships to counties, from provincial capitals to the capital, which ensured his power to call the wind and rain, to get along with everyone, and his glory of "only success and no failure".

However, according to Lu Yao's idea, the characters involved have higher power and rank, and the story is not about Hu Tiancheng alone, but several characters, from the time just after liberation to the present, and on a grand scale.

"Brother Lu, I'm looking forward to seeing your masterpiece." Fang Minghua finally said with a smile.

"It's still early. Once the first draft is finished, you can help me take a look."

Lu Yao chatted for a while and then left. Fang Minghua was thinking about what had just happened. She didn't expect that Lu Yao was going to write a political novel.

On January 3, the preliminary review meeting of the first World Chinese Literature Award Reading Class was held at Xijing Tangcheng Hotel. At the opening ceremony, in addition to Hu Cai representing the Qin Province Writers Association, the provincial leader in charge of culture also attended the venue and delivered an enthusiastic speech, welcoming more than 50 writers, editors, and literary critics from all over the country to gather in Xijing.

I hope that besides having a good meeting and selecting excellent works, they can also have a happy life and fun in Xijing!
Qin Province TV, Xijing TV, Guangming Daily, Qin Province Daily and other media reported the meeting.

On the second day of the meeting, the members of the reading class started working intensively.
In 20 days, their task is to select five novels, five novellas, five short stories, five essays and five poetry collections from a large number of literary works as the finalists for the first Chinese Poetry Collection Award. At that time, the jury members will select the best one from each of these five different types of literary works to become the winner of this year's literature award.

Since the call for submissions for the first World Chinese Literature Award was issued, a total of 48 novels, 101 novellas, 187 short stories, 154 essays, and 65 volumes of poetry (collections) have been received.

It is also an extremely arduous task to select five works each from so many works.

According to the selection rules, the reading class members conducted the first round of voting based on careful reading of the submitted works over the past few months.

The novel, poetry and prose groups will conduct secret ballots on the manuscripts of each group respectively. Literary works that receive more than half of the votes will enter the next round of selection, and the rest will be eliminated.

Then they discussed in groups and expressed their own opinions on a certain work, including its advantages and disadvantages, and then a second round of voting was carried out.

As always, only those who receive more than half of the votes will enter the next round of selection. If the number of works of a certain type that receive more than half of the votes in this round is less than five, all of them will be shortlisted works.

The third round of voting is based on the first two rounds. The selected works are ranked from high to low in terms of votes, and the top five are shortlisted works.

The preliminary evaluation of the entire reading class has come to an end, and the final evaluation is the task of the 13 members of the jury.

Fang Minghua participated in the discussion as a member of the reading group of the novel group, including Lu Yao, Jia Pingwa, and Chen Zhongshi, while the other two reading group members from Qin Province, Bai Miao and Wang Yu, were in the prose and poetry group.

To be honest, in the past few months, I have been reading novels so much that I feel dizzy all day long. I have written a thick book just from reading notes.

Among novels, Fang Minghua pays most attention to four novels.

Liu Sifen's "White Gate Willow"

Yu Hua's "Crying in the Rain"

and Qi Jun's "Oranges Are Red"

There is also the short story "Fragrance of the Mountain" written by American writer Robert Olen Butler.

Historically, "White Gate Willow" won the next Mao Dun Literature Prize.

Although "Crying in the Rain" is not as good as Yu Hua's "To Live", he later won the French Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature for this novel.

Fang Minghua feels that "The Oranges Are Red" is the novel with the highest literary value among the novels by Hong Kong and Taiwan writers received in this call for submissions, and is even better than "Dumplings" submitted by Li Bihua this time.

As for Butler's "Fragrant Mountain", it is one of the few novels written by a truly non-Chinese writer, and the content is also very interesting - it is about the experience of a Vietnamese in New York against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

Fang Minghua wanted to see how far these four novels could go in these rounds of voting.

(End of this chapter)