"2019 Booker Prize Finalists Announced" - Phoenix Reading

"This year's Booker Prize list has been announced, and the Booker Prize winner from 20 years ago is back!" - NetEase News

"The Booker International Award announced the long list, and Zhang Chu was shortlisted for the first time with "Youth Pi"!" - Tencent.com

Zhang Chu was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and "Life of Pi" is about to be adapted. ”

"International Express, Zhang Chu was shortlisted for the British Booker Award for the first time, what is the Booker Prize?"

"In the past and present life of the Booker Prize, can we expect Zhang Chu to achieve another great achievement?"

Obviously, he hasn't won the award yet, but he has just entered the long list, but the domestic news media have reported it in a surging posture.

I'm afraid that some netizens who don't know the truth still think that Zhang Chu has successfully won this award, and no Chinese writer or Chinese writer has won this award since its establishment, and now Zhang Chu is approaching little by little.

Gu Xinxue is very optimistic about the prospects of "Youth Pi", if this book can't win awards, then I'm afraid there won't be another one in the short term!

The lone seedling of Random House, the world's top publisher, would have been ridiculed by their competitors if they hadn't even made Life of Pi.

In addition, the content of this book has a lot of Indian culture, and for some old-fashioned judges, this is also a work containing British colonial roots, even if the author is Chinese.

Of course, there is another advantage, Zhang Chu's age and popularity are quite high in the UK, at least he is not an unknown person.

His book "Sherlock" has been the top seller in the UK for several weeks, and the British drama of the same name has been developed into its second season!

Now the Nanhai Publishing Company is running quickly immediately, and when "Sou Shen Ji" has not yet been released, it is better to sell more old books.

So the employees of the Propaganda Department struck while the iron was hot and began to build momentum for "Life of Pi" on the Internet.

In the eyes of ordinary netizens, such news is indeed shocking!

So many Chinese writers have not been able to accomplish the goal, can Zhang Chu achieve it?

Can "Youth Pi", which won the first prize of the Chinese Good Literature Essay Competition, also conquer foreign readers and judges?

Such doubts did not affect the celebration of readers, and there were quite a lot of blessings on the Internet.

"Nominations are based on strength, and winning awards depends on luck. This sentence is the most liked comment, representing the attitude of netizens, being nominated is a victory, and it is of course the best to get the award, it doesn't matter if you don't.

"It's from "Life of Pi" that I started to like Zhang Chuda, and the stupid British guy finally got his senses!

"Anyway, is this book really good? I've heard it many times, but I haven't had a chance to read it. "It's a curiosity on the part of the onlooker, and if it weren't for the fact that it's always reported in the news, it wouldn't have been remembered at all.

At this time, Zhang Chu's fans immediately turned on the powerful Amway mode: "Of course it's good-looking! A man and a tiger have been drifting on the sea for so long, and it feels terrible to think about it." ”

"Highly recommended! I don't know how to describe it, but this one is very good. ”

"Oh my God, are you an alien? I haven't seen Pi before! The ending is reversed so quickly that it makes people shudder. Combined with the previous content, it is simply scary, I am afraid that it is not good. ”

"Just look at the score of Douban's reading, 9.1 points! Zhang Chu has written so many books, and this one is the most highly rated. ”

Zhang He was originally just a little moved after seeing the news, but now after seeing such enthusiastic answers from netizens, he couldn't help but really take interest in this book.

Although he is not very interested in fantasy rafting, and has seen its blue cover in many bookstores, he has never bought it, and even because he does not follow the trend, he naturally subconsciously stays away.

It was only now, after reading the strong Amway of readers, that he immediately placed an order to buy it after seeing the discount news of "Youth Pi" on Douban.

The original book costs thirty-five yuan, and the electronic version itself is cheap, and it is still on sale, and in the end it only costs less than eight yuan to download it to the mobile phone!

……

Peng Ke is different from Zhang He, he bought "Life of Pi" last year when it was just released as a physical book, and he read it as soon as he bought it.

It's just that I only thought this story was very good at the time, and I didn't think too much about it, thinking it was just an ordinary work, and there wasn't much connotation and content to dig into, and it belonged to the kind that was thrown away after reading it.

Now after reading the news in the newspaper that "Youth Pi" was shortlisted for the Foreign Literature Award, Peng Ke realized that he had always underestimated this work!

What you see is just the tip of the iceberg, not the whole content at all!

So he took "Life of Pi" off the bookshelf again, put it on the desk seriously, and read it carefully.

It was only at this time that Penco realized how wrong he was in the first place, and this book is not such a simple and superficial work at all!

As some book reviews have said, this is indeed a book that makes one prefer to believe that there is a God.

After experiencing the beautiful scenery description of the second part and the passionate and inspirational struggle for the survival of the sea beast tamer, the thin ten pages of truth at the end are completely heartbreaking.

Peng Ke really can't describe the huge gap between the truth and the story he reads, and he is very glad that he has an incomparably strong heart, so he was not made full of holes by Zhang Chu's words!

The descriptions in the book are very culturally diverse, and there are many metaphors, and each reader can have their own interpretation.

There is almost no readership threshold for this kind of work, as long as it can be literate.

The hometown of the protagonist was once a French colony, not a colony of the British Empire as traditionally imagined, but a place where cultures blend and where various religious ideas converge!

"Zhang Chu is really a genius, so many religions and the protagonist's growth environment are so diverse. ”

If it weren't for the interesting life of the zoo and the fame, I'm afraid this part would make countless readers jump to read or even abandon the book!

A man and a tiger drifting at sea for more than two hundred days may seem like nothing to write about, but this is precisely the main content and the main concern of the readers.

The description of this lonely, one-person journey is so detailed that Penco even thinks that the little raft he made is more meaningful than that of Tiger Richard Parker.

Zhang Chu used a lot of space to describe the reasons for leaving the tiger and the way to get along with the tiger, so that after the latter faction lost his sight, he even had a long friendship with the tiger.

These are the means used to make fun!

Of course, the interaction with the tiger can be called the most attractive part, Zhang Chu was scared in this regard, and Peng Ke even agreed with the words of a netizen, "I don't know how many experts Zhang Chu consulted, how long he has observed the Bengal tiger, the process of the protagonist's tiger training can be written in Bei Ye's "Wilderness Survival". ”

The wonderful thing about this book is that everyone will feel very complicated after reading it, and there are many feelings in their hearts, but they don't know where to start.

Life of Pi can't prove that Pi exists, what happened in 227 days, or even that Pi is himself——- maybe it's all just a brainstorm.

However, the whole book ultimately succeeds in proving the existence of God. Because he had to be present and arrange everything, the imagination could construct a story in which Pi was far removed from the tragic reality and successfully twisted into a fantasy adventure.

And, most importantly, all humanity is able to accept the story as a result!

……

Faced with the work that has returned to people's sight, Chris, the editor of Random House, is actually not as excited as Zhou Kang and others imagined.

In the video conversation, Chris looked a little agitated, and he said in English: "Zhang, I am very supportive of your book, and there have been many professional reviews who have praised it. But it doesn't look like a work suitable for a film adaptation. In fact, the British side acknowledges the storytelling and literary nature of Life of Pi, but calls it the least likely work to be adapted. ”

Zhang Chu naturally didn't react to this result, but Zhou Kang was very puzzled after listening to the translator's words.

If there is anyone who most hopes to be adapted into a movie, it must be Zhou Kang, after all, the Booker Award is too famous as the cradle of top IP development!

"Why is this the least likely to be adapted? I think this story is easy to solve, isn't there a man and a dog in "I Am Legend"? It just changed the location from abandoned New York to the sea. Zhou Kang asked.

Chris was a little aggrieved, he spread his hands and said: "I'm not from the film industry, how can I know the reason? Maybe they think it's too dangerous to find a tiger to film at sea?"

Zhou Kang still wanted to speak, but Zhang Chu stopped him directly and said, "Let Chris go, it's not what he said." The adaptation of "Life of Pi" is indeed very difficult. ”

Judging from past and present lives, it is not easy to bring the story of Life Pi to the big screen.

In its own right, the story is a mix of esoteric and grotesque, with epic adventure and painful introspection, and there is a lot of something beyond technology.

This is a work that makes people believe!

When the author of the original book is writing, it is like a movie scene jumping into his mind, and the director must challenge these symbols between the lines and transform the words into visual reality.

If you want to shoot this work, the director has to understand the story, empathize with the whole story, and at the same time overcome great difficulties.

The wit in it keeps the story alive, and the horror adds spice to it, but it brings considerable difficulties to the film adaptation, and the adaptation of the film script is quite difficult.

Originally on the planet, Canada's Jan Martel quickly became a bestseller after its publication, became popular all over the world, and won many literary awards such as the Booker Prize and the German Book Prize in 2002.

As early as 2003, Twentieth Century Fox won the rights to adapt the film of Juvenile Pi, and they successively found M. Knight Shyamalan (Sixth Sense), Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity), Jean-Pierre Genet (Angel Amelie) and many other directors, but each time the project was declared bankrupt for some reason.

It wasn't until Chinese director Ang Lee took office in February 2009 that things took a turn for the better!

Ang Lee had read it as early as 2001, but at first he was too skeptical that this work, which contains the three most troublesome elements of water, children, and animals, could take shape, and he himself had never seen a movie that could make a good story about water.

It would have been unimaginable five years ago, but in 2009, new technologies were pushing the film industry forward, and the development of 3D and CG technology saved Life of Pi.

It took four years and more than 3,000 people to make the film, which finally grossed $600 million worldwide, won 11 Oscar nominations, and helped Ang Lee win the Oscar for Best Director for the second time!

Twentieth Century Fox bought the rights in 2003 and was not officially released until the end of 2012, so you can imagine how difficult it was to create this film.

At present, Zhang Chu's version of "Life of Pi" has not officially won the Booker Award, nor has it stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year, so it naturally cannot attract the attention of producers of major Hollywood manufacturers!

Due to the shortage of funds and personnel, independent film studios could not shoot such excellent commercial blockbusters, and Zhang Chu could not agree to a hasty copyright deal.

These people in front of them are a little worried, they all seem to be not very optimistic about the film and television prospects of "Youth Pi", only Zhang Chu is full of confidence.

If "Youth Pi" in the previous life could get a box office of 600 million US dollars, it will obviously not be too bad in this life, and you must be patient to catch a big fish!

Chris probably saw the composure on Zhang Chu's face, and he asked puzzledly, "Zhang, why aren't you surprised at all?"

"Because I think that title is a compliment. Zhang Chu replied ingeniously.

This answer made the rest of the group frown, apparently they didn't expect such a thing.

Zhang Chu added: "Isn't the most unlikely work to be adapted the best and most wonderful work? Because of this title, I think "Life of Pi" deserves the best adaptation!"

"Wow, that's a great idea. I agree!" Chris clenched his fists excitedly, who would give it that name if it had no adaptation value?

It should have been replaced with the least adaptation value work a long time ago!

Zhou Kang also figured it out here, and he said excitedly: "That's the truth." The hardest, but also the best. Surely a Hollywood mogul has noticed us, it must be so!"