Being shortlisted for the Booker International Award has not greatly improved Zhang Chu's life, after all, it is just a nomination, and if it is awarded, it will definitely have unexpected effects.

When those news were covered by the rest of the news, except for the Chinese version of "Life of Pi", which bucked the trend on the book sales list, and once rose to eighth place in a single day.

At this time, it has been almost three months since the physical book "Ghost Blows the Lantern" was launched, and the book has not been worn out by time, but has a tendency to become more and more courageous!

Always hovering in the Top50 of the single-day sales list, only occasionally falling down once or twice, and not going down the rest of the time, the call for the annual sales champion is getting higher and higher!

On the contrary, the sales of "The Fifteenth Year of Wanli" released by Zhang Chu in March have maintained a peak for a period of time, and now almost four weeks have passed, and they can only be seen at the end of the sales list.

This is a work that needs word-of-mouth fermentation, and although it has received countless praises in the next month, the time is too short in the end.

"The Fifteenth Year of Wanli" is a work that can be sold slowly in the next few decades, so Zhang Chu is not worried about its sales at all.

Maybe it's relatively low now, but if you can be at the bottom of the ranking every year, the accumulated sales will definitely be very impressive.

In my previous life, there were too many channels to promote "The Fifteenth Year of Wanli", and many university teachers were spontaneously helping to promote it, and there were also popular TV series to help.

Zhang Chu has not pushed his influence to that situation in his life for the time being, but the efficiency is not slow, and the cumulative sales of 690,000 copies of "The Fifteenth Year of Wanli" have been the best-selling academic work in recent years!

This is only its first month of sales, and many of the works that are specifically aimed at sales have not yet reached this level.

In the final analysis, even if Zhang Chu's reputation is blessed, it is impossible to make this academic work directly popular with half the sky, and Zhang Chu does not have so much charm and ability for the time being.

The book is selling smoothly, and "Sou Shen Ji" has also entered the follow-up plot and began to charge on the Internet, and the reading rate is quite high!

In the origin Chinese website, almost half of the readers who collected the book are subscribing to this book, and the sales momentum on the shelves is very hot.

This also made Chen Guangtou very pleased, at least the 10 million yuan did not lose money, but earned more back!

The only pity is that they only bought the electronic copyright at the original point, and the rest of the channels will have to share with Zhang Chu if they publish "Sou Shen Ji".

Nowadays, online literature has been quite developed, and hundreds of millions of Internet readers cannot all use only one client, and many people are scattered reading.

"Sou Shen Ji" was first published on the origin Chinese website, but the origin Chinese network also authorized it to other channel providers, so that readers can find Zhang Chu's works on QQ reading or WeChat reading.

This part of the income must not be underestimated, many networks at the origin of the subscription fee may not be as much as the channel to send the manuscript fee, this is a thing that can be encountered but not sought!

Therefore, after "Sou Shen Ji" began to charge, in addition to the monthly electronic buyout fee, he could also get the manuscript fee of the channel provider, and continuously contributed to Zhang Chu's wallet.

……

Compared with the strangeness of the Booker Prize among the Chinese masses, the British people are very cordial to it.

Every year, millions and tens of millions of readers count on the Booker Prize nominations to find the right work to read.

It's a feast for literature lovers!

All the works that appear on the Booker Prize longlist have seen sales rise by varying degrees this week.

American writer Paul Auster's work "Four, Three, Two One" attracted more than 120,000 people to read it, and the discussion was amazing.

Irish writer Sebastian Barry uses "Endless Long Days" to transport readers to the battlefield, where a pair of military friends discover the meaning and vitality of life and meet a girl who may bring them happiness.

Hopefully, this isn't another literal version of the Pearl Harbor movie, and even though the proud British didn't buy it, it still sold more than 70,000 copies in a week, setting a record for the book's sales in a single week!

Unpopular works such as "The History of the Wolves", "All the Way West", and "No. 13 Reservoir" have entered the eyes of literature lovers to relieve their lovesickness.

Among these works, "Life of Pi" has shown from the beginning that in addition to being an extraordinary bestseller, both the subject matter and the author have made the British people very curious.

This is also the highest-selling one in the Booker Prize long list, which sold 210,000 copies in the UK!

None of the award-winning works in previous years had such a big effect, and the works that were still in the nomination stage could make such a big improvement, which was enough to surprise the critics.

So much so that in the classroom of the Department of Literature at Cambridge University, the professor of literature was discussing all kinds of things contained in "Life of Pi" with the elite students under the podium.

"Life School is different from many traditions in that its narrative adopts a single focus mode, and the singular perspective makes it feel very immersive. ”

The white guy in the hoodie was talking, and the professor was analyzing from the surface to the inside, so he volunteered to answer.

With a dark striped shirt, a brown fur vest and a signature Mediterranean hairstyle, the professor looks to be about fifty years old.

Last week, he gave his students an assignment to read Life of Pi, which could only be discussed after everyone had read it.

Charlie is right when he says that the reader deconstructs the story through strict first-person, which, combined with its own fantastical character, makes this book a special reading experience for the reader. The truth and falsehood in it are also the main reasons for attracting readers. ”

In most people's imagination, the literature majors at Cambridge University must be discussing "Les Miserables", "One Flew Over the Asylum" or Shakespeare's works.

But they know how to keep pace with the times, and it has always been a place for the free exchange of new ideas, and they know how to analyze the excellent works of the outside world, rather than blindly resisting them.

The professor continued: "As far as the overall structure of Life of Pi is concerned, due to the sense of jumping and tearing of the narrative structure, the resulting storytelling is actually not strong, and the form is quite a bit of a postmodern stream of consciousness. There are two narrative lines as a whole, and who's going to say about those two lines?"

As soon as the words fell, a pair of hands were raised in the classroom, and the professor casually clicked, "Matthew, you can talk about it." Looks like you're confident. ”

This black man named Matthew actually looks a little bookish, which is very inconsistent with the first feeling that normal people have about black people.

"I think that in Zhang's work, one narrative line is the experience of the pastorists, the other is the description of the presentists, and the two narrative timelines have their own independent chapters. The former adds a large number of religious descriptions in the process of narration, reflecting that Pai received a variety of religious education in his youth, and at the same time provides a certain basis for the later text. The latter reflects the understanding of faith in the aftermath of the disaster. ”

……

The discussion in the class continues, but Life of Pi has attracted the attention of many professional book critics and magazines.

Before being nominated for the Booker Prize, Life of Pi was arguably unknown in the UK, but now it has entered the attention of professionals.

They all want to know what kind of surprises the Chinese writer who has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for the first time will bring, and what kind of fantastic drifting journey an ordinary teenager will have.

British Prime Minister Theresa May actually took the time to finish reading this work in her busy schedule, and left quite a high rating!

She sees the book as an elegant testament to God's existence and a perfect demonstration of the power of the story.

Speaking of British book review culture, we have to mention the "Times Literary Supplement" and the "London Review of Books Magazine", the former is known as the most outstanding humanistic book review and cultural magazine of our time.

Founded in 1902, it is published as a weekly magazine, and its editorial and business is actually independent of The Times.

The London Review of Books, on the other hand, is a specialized book review magazine, on par with the New York Times's book review section, and was once a giveaway inserted in the New York Review of Books, but eventually became independent.

This is also because the New York Review of Books is a magazine with too many sources from the United Kingdom, which is not only a book review magazine, but also publishes poetry.

In the face of such an annual ceremony in English as the Booker Prize, the Times Literary Supplement certainly analyzes the nominated works.

They spoke highly of Life of Pi, and even gave a five-star recommendation in the book review: "Make the impossible possible." It pushes the literary imagination to another new frontier, which is both fantastical and grotesque, but also naïve, realistic and full of meaning. A fantastical journey for a teenager turns into an amazing reading journey at the end. ”

The London Review of Books, in line with its old rivals, did not contradict it, and the reviewers thought it was full of allure to feast on, because it was so good that it was too good to see and retell its plot. Thrills, suspense, fluidity, and faith, this is a beautiful feast that readers of any era will not refuse, let alone today?

"It's the most peculiar, yet the easiest to read in many years. Life of Pi is a mix of fantasy, fable, and morality. This is a cross-border evaluation from The Economist magazine.

The Edinburgh Review even wrote an essay on Life of Pi instead of a commentary. It went from the Youth School, and ideally returned to the book, giving an unprecedented compliment to Zhang Chu.

"This wonderful linguistic story has an unexpected ending, and it is a bold and brilliant work. ”

"It's too rich to ignore. However, it is too connotative to spread out, and because it is too shallow, it cannot enter the ranks of the classics of the times. ”

"The book is full of stories about the will of God, the power of narrative, and the tenacity of the human spirit, all of which struck the reader. ”

"Zhang Chu has created an adult adventure. This is not because the content is inappropriate for children or violence, but because it is a profound theme of spirituality and self-knowledge in this fantasy story that can feel both immersive and engaging. ”

"A captivating and allegorical adventure, the name of Richard Parker, the tiger, reminds me of that beach cannibalism that shocked the world many years ago when I was studying in law school. It turns out that Zhang Chu's creative inspiration came from this!"

Blackwood's book review is unique in that it doesn't spend much time on the story of Life of Pi, but instead focuses on Richard Parker.

When Zhang Chu didn't make a lot of publicity, most readers and book reviewers never thought that they could trace the creative inspiration from the name of the Bengal tiger!

For the average reader, isn't Richard Parker just registered as the wrong name?

What's so curious about this?

But for lawyers and law students, this case is all too familiar!

In 1884, the Queen's v. Dudley and Stephens scandalous beach cannibalism case in England was a far-reaching criminal case involving cannibalism after a shipwreck, which was defended by maritime practice and established a common law precedent that necessity could not justify a murder charge.

If you are not a professional, you simply do not remember this case and the names of the victims in it.

Fortunately, the reviewer for "Blackwood" happened to be a working law school professor who had just finished telling his students about this high-profile criminal case.

While the Wood Rhino was silent, four crew members were stranded in the South Atlantic, along with three crew members and a 17-year-old manservant named Richard Parker. Drifting on the sea, 3 adult crew members survived by killing orphaned Richard Parker and eating his flesh!

It turns out that the name is not so simple!

Readers in the UK were almost stunned by what the review revealed!

"Life of Pi actually has a prototype, and it's British?"

"Poor Richard Parker, may God be with you. ”

"It's ironic to name a tiger after the victim who was eaten, and this tiger is a metaphor for a cannibal!"

"I'm reminded of the Edgar Allan Poe one, which also has Richard Parker's cannibalistic story. Why haven't we even found the connection?"

"God, I didn't understand this at all. I'll have to watch it again!"

"It was so cruel that I suddenly didn't dare look at it. ”

Readers are a little delighted, it turns out that this book has this kind of easter egg hidden, and they have a feeling of long-term knowledge.

There are also many people who shudder when they see this meaningful name when they discover this reality.

borrowed the allusions of the British and applied them to themselves, many readers were pleasantly surprised, why did they discover such a work?

The revelation of Richard Parker's name naturally transformed Life of Pi from a foreign writer into a work with a local flavor, and also made the lottery agencies quickly revise the odds.

Its odds of winning the Booker Prize have increased dramatically!