As a return gift to San Mao, Lin Chaoyang chose a set of "San Mao's Wanderings" published by Lingnan Fine Arts Publishing House, which he bought casually when visiting a bookstore in Guangzhou two years ago.

A 64-volume comic book collection, even with 10 volumes together, is very inconspicuous.

Maggie Cheung flipped through these comic strips and found them inconspicuous. She didn't understand why Lin Chaoyang would give such a thing.

But seeing the characters in the comic strip, she could roughly understand that this might be Lin Chaoyang's ingenuity.

In fact, this was not Lin Chaoyang's ingenuity. The first "children's book" Sanmao read when she was a child was the comic strip "Sanmao's Wanderings" drawn by Zhang Leping. Later, she adopted "Sanmao" as her pen name.

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After receiving the gift, Maggie Cheung vowed to reassure Lin Chaoyang that she would immediately contact Brigitte Lin to deliver it.

After a while, Tao Yushu came back from get off work and said that she had received a call today from Wu Shaozu, chairman of the Yanjing Asian Games Organizing Committee, inviting her family to participate in the 11th Asian Games, which opened in Yanjing on September 22.

Lin Chaoyang and his wife donated 30 million yuan to the Asian Games. It is normal for them to receive official invitations.

The formal invitation letter has been sent from Yanjing. Wu Shaozu said it would be delivered to Tao Yushu within two days. The invitation letter would be transported by air.

Tao Yumo clapped his hands happily, and the two children also clapped happily when they heard that they were going back to Yanjing.

The next day, Ming Pao Publishing House went to Lin Chaoyang's house to pick up the manuscript.

The next day, when Li Shifei from Huacheng Publishing House came to pick up the manuscript, he happened to run into Lin Haiyin from Wandao.

When Lin Chaoyang contacted Lin Haiyin, he hoped that the three places could publish the book at the same time. Lin Haiyin was very excited when he heard the news and actively ran over in person, which was a little more efficient than Li Shifei.

When Lin Haiyin and Li Shifei got the manuscript, they didn't leave in a hurry, but started flipping through it first.

The two of them frowned more and more as they looked at it, and the more they looked at it, the more confused they became.

The beginning of this novel called "Father" is completely different from Lin Chaoyang's creative style in recent years. The whole novel is non-linear and has fragmented clues. It seems illogical and makes people unable to read it for a moment.

Connect the plot together.

And in terms of creating the atmosphere, it feels very suspenseful for some reason, which is different from the seemingly warm "Father".

The generous title is out of place.

During the first two hours of reading the novel, both Lin Haiyin and Li Shifei spent their time feeling upset.

Until the element of "watch" appeared several times in the novel, the two of them gradually seemed to understand something and continued reading patiently.

Lin Chaoyang's new work is called "Father", which is based on the French film "Father Trapped in Time".

This movie was originally a play, and its name is "Father".

The performance of the play "Father" was very popular in many European and American countries and moved countless audiences. In 2014

In 2001, he won the recognition of the highest French drama award, the "Molière Award", and was later adapted by the director into the movie "Father Trapped in Time". After the movie was released, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Award, British Academy Film Award for Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay Award and many other awards, and has been highly praised.

The story of "Father Trapped in Time" is not complicated. It tells the story of an old man's journey from discovering his illness to gradually accepting it and then becoming delirious.

What is clever is that the film uses Anthony's first-person perspective to tell a spiritual world where illusion and reality are confused after the illness through the splicing of time and space.

This splicing method is a typical stream of consciousness technique in novel creation, and it is also Lin Chaoyang's best skill.

In "Father" he created, his father's name is Lao An, and the story still uses his father Lao An as the protagonist and main perspective.

Lao An, who lives in Yanjing, suffers from Alzheimer's disease, but he is stubborn and highly independent and refuses all help from his daughter.

However, after his daughter decided to move to Xiangjiang, Lao An faced a difficult life choice: move to a nursing home or accept the new caregiver her daughter helped him find.

In the process, facing the ever-changing environment, Lao An began to doubt the people he loved, his own thoughts, and even the structure of his reality.

He seemed to have entered a strange journey through time and space. Disorganized memories and timelines intertwined into bizarre stories, and strange and familiar people also made him confused.

In the novel, Lin Chaoyang uses Lao An's constant search for his watch as a clue to connect his entire process from the initial mild memory decline to severe degradation, until he retains a moment of memory.

At the same time, the novel also restores the spatial overlap of the three houses in the movie in different time settings, presenting the labyrinthine life filling and chaotic memories of Alzheimer's patients.

It allows the reader to unravel the confusing clues and connections between fragments, as if experiencing the patient's confusing life situation.

It is not until reading the entire novel that the reader can finally fully understand all the information and feel the anxiety, fear, confusion and helplessness of the sick person.

After spending more than two days, Lin Haiyin and Li Shifei finally finished reading "Father" and understood the story written by Lin Chaoyang. In addition to being shocked, they were more moved.

All the non-linear, fragmented, illogical and disorganized writings and inks turned into dust in the sunlight when Lao An woke up from the nursing home. Every detail appeared, and the viewer suddenly understood.

It turns out that all this was caused by father Lao An's illness. He forgot his daughter, his lover, and himself.

Lin Haiyin and Li Shifei are both over sixty years old, and they are more sympathetic to Lao An's experiences in the novel.

Moved by it.

After reading the novel, the two of them were not in a hurry to leave. Instead, they came to discuss the plot of the novel "Father" with Lin Chaoyang with great interest. The story structure of "Father" was too clever. Although they read it over and over again, the two of them still had a lot to say.

We need to understand what Lin Chaoyang is thinking.

"'Watch' is indeed a very important image. It runs throughout, and also hints at Lao An's sense of powerlessness as the time and space order he strives to maintain is gradually lost."

"Chaoyang, you used the image of the tree so well, especially the sentence "I feel like all my leaves are about to fall off" when Lao An was completely trapped in the whirlpool of memory and cried bitterly. It was so heartbreaking.

Got it!

The scene at the end with the old tree swaying in the wind outside the window is also very touching, and it concretely expresses the life metaphor of love and loss."

Li Shifei, who understood the novel, was full of praise for Lin Chaoyang's hard work.

Lin Haiyin also said with emotion: "What touched me the most was the conversation between Lao An and his daughter. The daughter said: Dad, you are sick. Lao An said: I am just old."

Reciting the dialogue in the novel, Lin Haiyin's eyes turned red,

"At first, Chaoyang said that the theme of this novel is 'aging'. When I first read the novel, I didn't really understand it. It was clearly about 'disease'.

But when I read the novel again and saw this sentence again, I suddenly felt blessed and finally understood it.

Alzheimer's disease is only a medical discovery in the past few decades. Before this disease was even named, wasn't it already present in our lives?

Who knew they were sick? They just thought they were old, too old to remember things, too old to be confused.

It has become a tree that is old, sick, and has almost lost all its leaves!"

After Lin Haiyin said this with deep emotion, Li Shifei was silent and deeply resonated with her.

The novel "Father" is not so much about Alzheimer's disease as it is about the plight of human beings in old age and frailty, which fits the theme of "olding" mentioned by Lin Chaoyang.

But Li Shifei also thought that whether it is "Entering the Teacher" or "Father", they actually have an implicit and deeper theme, which is love.

He expressed his feelings and won Lin Haiyin's approval.

He and Lin Haiyin are both editors and creative writers. This dual perspective gives them a deeper feeling and understanding of the emotions and connotations reflected in literary works.

After some discussion, both of them gave "Father" a very high evaluation.

After a while, when the conversation between the two gradually faded, Lin Haiyin said to Lin Chaoyang: "Chaoyang, congratulations on writing another masterpiece!"

Lin Chaoyang said a few words of humility, and then the three of them chatted for a while. Only then did Lin Haiyin and Li Shifei leave with the novel manuscript satisfied.

In the blink of an eye, it was September, and Lin Chaoyang suddenly received a notification from Random House in the United States that he had been shortlisted for this year's Neustadt International Literary Award.

The Newstat International Literary Award was established in 1969. Its earliest name was the Overseas Book Review International Literary Award. It was co-sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and its international literary publication "World Literature Today".

"Overseas Book Review" was the predecessor of "Today's World Literature", and the award was changed to its current name in 1976.

The Neustadt International Literary Prize is awarded every two years, and can only be awarded to one winner. Over the past 20 years since its establishment, it has gradually gained considerable international prestige.

Unlike some literary awards, which are rewards for works, the Neustadt International Literary Award is for the literary achievements of the writer himself.

It is also a rare award in the world that does not distinguish between literary genres. Whether it is poetry, novels or dramas, as long as the writer has made outstanding achievements in a certain field of creation, he may be recognized by the jury.

There is no registration or application required for the Neustadt International Literary Prize. The only criterion for nominating finalists is outstanding and sustained literary achievements, and living writers from any country in the world and writing in any language are eligible for nomination.

In the 21 years since its establishment, the Neustadt International Literature Prize has produced a total of 10 award-winning writers.

These people are all well-known figures in the European and American literary circles, such as Giuseppe Ongaretti, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Francis Ponge, etc.

And because most of the winners will win the Nobel Prize for Literature a few years later, the Neustadt International Literature Prize is also regarded by many in the European and American literary circles as a prelude to the selection of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and enjoys the title of "American Nobel Prize"

of good reputation.

This year, Lin Chaoyang was nominated for the Newstat International Literary Award, which surprised Random House.

They only started to introduce Lin Chaoyang's novels to the United States in 1988. The first work they introduced was "The Truman Show". At that time, Random House was just trying it out, and no one expected that the sales performance of this novel would be unexpectedly good.

After being on the "New York Times" bestseller list in the fifth month after its release, it has been on the list for 32 consecutive weeks. Although the ranking is not very high, such an everlasting performance really surprised Random House.

To date, the cumulative sales of "The Truman Show" in the United States have reached a gratifying 365,000 copies.

It brought nearly US$750,000 in royalties to Lin Chaoyang.

After the success of "The Truman Show", Random House introduced "The Death of Van Gogh" last year.

Compared with "The Truman Show", which has the influence of the movie version, the performance of "The Death of Van Gogh" was not inferior at the time of its release, but was actually a bit better.

All this is due to the fact that the novel itself describes a story that happened in Europe in the 19th century, and the protagonist is Van Gogh, who is familiar to Americans.

Regardless of whether you are in China or the United States, there are many young people who follow the trend.

After the publication of "The Death of Van Gogh", Random House invited several novelists and critics to write reviews for the novel.

"The novel vividly restores the magnificent life of Van Gogh, a bohemian and underappreciated painting genius from the perspective of Aaron Bushnell, making the image of Van Gogh vivid on the page, making readers feel as if they are in the era in which Van Gogh lived.
To be continued...