/ Urban / A History in Shanghai
Synopsis
Breno Silva has just attended the Anonymous Writers Congress in Kuala Lumpur and is on his way back to São Paulo when a bomb scare on his Malaysia Airlines flight forces him to spend a night in Shanghai.
Fascinated by the Chinese language - he is after all a ghost writer by trade and a man who lives by language - he spends the night watching television, trying to pick out words. In charting Breno's life we enter a storytelling labyrinth, as his myth-making, love-making and essays into another culture become mired in the world where celebrities make reputations and fortunes from the writing of others, and where the reader is not sure what language, or what reality, is being offered.
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1Reviews
- Translation Quality
- Stability of Updates
- Story Development
- Character Design
- World Background
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I'm gonna give an honest review since the novel is already finished in my maternal language. Writing Quality: 5/5 This is an easy, intelligent story, written in the first person. Because of the size, it's probably more of a novella than a novel. Shanghai has a light touch and I feel that it invites laughter toward Silva (at least I hope that was the case). I should think anyone who can tolerate streams-of-consciousness could get some enjoyment out of it. The other praiseworthy element here is how in tone and style it looks meandering and self-indulgent but as you progress through the text it becomes more imaginative. Stability of Updates: 5/5 Two or one chapters per day. It's just translation now and there are a good buffer of chapters. Story Development: 5/5 On the surface, Shanghai is a novel about nothing, a fluid account of one man’s love affair with the Chinese language. Silva’s narrative glides along in chapters alternating Brazil with Shanghai, playing parallels for all they are worth. At home, he is employed and even has a certain invisible prestige. In China, he finds himself a nobody, starting from scratch to recreate his late departed career. However, it’s not the story of a conflict, a 'troubled man caught between two worlds' and all that. **: It’s not really a novel about relationships (unlike Sylvia). It’s a novel about language and storytelling. Tales within tales, unexpected mirror-images, semi-portentous coincidences, the supposed fuzziness of the fiction-reality border - that sort of thing. Character Design: 4/5 Silva is a remarkably unreflective narrator, an individual so abominably self-centred it doesn’t even occur to him to moralize about his actions. The effect is almost comical. He swears up and down vouching for his purity as a ghostwriter while it becomes more and more obvious that he burns with vanity. I might have reservations about giving it 5 stars due to the difficulty many readers have with unsympathetic protagonists. World Background: 4/5 There are a lot of scenes, interactions and places that it makes it feel as if Silva is about to cross your street. That aside, you never do get a particular sense of Chinese or its people but that’s hardly surprising given who’s telling this story. Overall: 4.5/5 The ending is also commendable, It’s really a fun read, quirky and just a touch comedic. Recommended.