Decoded: A Novel, by Mai Jia
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Decoded: A Novel, by Mai Jia
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"Mai plays adroitly with literary genre and crafts a story of Borgesian subtlety and complexity." "The New Yorker"""Rong Jinzhen, an autistic math genius with a past shrouded in myth, is forced to abandon his academic pursuits when he is recruited into Unit 701: a top-secret Chinese intelligence agency whose sole purpose is counterespionage and code-breaking. As China's greatest cryptographer, Rong discovers that the mastermind behind the maddeningly difficult Purple Code is his former teacher and best friend, who is now working for China's enemy but this is only the first of many betrayals. The first novel to be published in English by one of China's greatest contemporary writers, "Decoded" is a riveting tale of obsession and a profound exploration of the mind of an inspired genius, one that discovers in cryptography the key to the human heart."
Decoded: A Novel, by Mai Jia- Amazon Sales Rank: #871247 in Books
- Brand: Jia, Mai/ Milburn, Olivia (TRN)/ Payne, Christopher (TRN)
- Published on: 2015-03-03
- Released on: 2015-03-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.26" h x .89" w x 5.52" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
From Booklist *Starred Review* Yan Shi, an aging Chinese code-cracker, views his life labor as “a sort of madness that pulls you close to insanity and to genius.” Readers skate the line separating insanity from genius in Mai Jia’s riveting tale of cryptographic warfare. At the center of Mai Jia’s taut novel, the mathematical genius Rong Jinzhen is spirited away as a young man to China’s secretive Unit 701, an elite cadre of code masters. There Jinzhen encounters the hero who broke WWII Japanese ciphers, now a helpless, chess-playing lunatic. Such is the peril Jinzhen faces as he launches his own lonely assault on PURPLE, the fiendish brainchild of his own former professor. In a narrative challenging readers to do their own decoding of its ruptures and inversions, readers see the brilliant protagonist survive daunting psychological dangers as he unravels PURPLE, inspired by a dream about the Russian chemist Mendeleyev. But when PURPLE’s sinister sibling, BLACK, emerges as the new foe, Jinzhen ventures forth again, veering toward mental breakdown when he loses a research notebook. A denouement at once heartbreaking and thought-provoking leaves readers pondering the collective sanity of a world shrouding knowledge in enigmas. Gifted translators bring English-speaking readers a Chinese literary treasure. --Bryce Christensen
Review
“A gripping plot [and] otherworldly aura . . . Spectacular.” ―The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
“Mai plays adroitly with literary genre and crafts a story of Borgesian subtlety and complexity.” ―The New Yorker
“Entirely original . . . A mix of spy thriller, historical saga, and mathematical puzzle that somehow coheres into a powerful whole.” ―Financial Times (London)
“There is a determination to unsettle the reader; an uneasiness about settling on one focused point of view . . . [Decoded's] deviations take the novel out of the realms of the hard-edged thriller into somewhere more surreal and unexpected.” ―Tash Aw, The Telegraph (London)
“Decoded stands out among Chinese novels for its pace, liveliness, and the sheer novelty of the tale it tells. It grips from the first page . . . It is an absolute joy to read.” ―The Economist
“Decoded is a subtle and complex exploration of cryptography, politics, dreams and their significance . . . There is much of interest in this book, from the strange, superstitious beginning to the gradual decline of the Rong family as the twentieth century progresses . . . But, in the end, it is the complexity of the characters that is Decoded's enduring pleasure.” ―The Times Literary Supplement
“Between the thrills of pulp fiction and those novels which come to be considered classics, there are boundaries and lines which, for many writers, are difficult to cross, and may take a lifetime (if ever) to realize. Mai Jia's achievement is that he has overcome that barrier with steady and assured strides. The footprints he has left behind form an ingenious, secretive literary treasure map.” ―Wong Kar-wai, director of The Grandmaster
“When I say that [Decoded] is excellent, I am referring both to its remarkable literary qualities and to the fact that it demands to be read in a single sitting.” ―Alai, Mao Dun Literature Prize–winning author of Red Poppies
“The illogical nature of destiny, the brilliance and fragility of genius, and circumstances that bind people together irrevocably as they drift through the darkness of the night all form part of Mai Jia's strange and mysterious novel.” ―Beijing Evening News
About the Author Mai Jia, who spent many years in the Chinese intelligence services, is one of China’s bestselling and most famous writers. He is the author of four novels, three of which have been turned into television series and films. Mai has won almost every major book prize in China, including its highest literary honor, the Mao Dun Literature Prize. Decoded is his first novel to be published in English.
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Most helpful customer reviews
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful. Family history, mathematical genius -- and espionage By S. McGee This evolves into a compelling and intelligent thriller -- eventually. The key word here being "eventually", as a reader who's expecting Daniel Silva-like thrills and chills right out of the gate will be bemused, bewildered and frustrated. Because before we ever watch mathematical genius Rong Jinzhen wrestle with the mysteries of cryptography in a secret Chinese department devoted to the subject, we follow the story of his great-uncle, his grandmother, his father, and his own isolated early childhood. All of those in his line of descent in the Rong family, it seems, are born with extraordinarily large heads: the question is whether that signifies extraordinary ability (as with his grandmother) or extraordinary devilry (as with his father). His family members want nothing whatsoever to do with Jinzhen, so in the years leading up to the Communist victory of 1949, he is raised in a remote corner of his family's large compound, neglected and ignored by everyone except the Western scholar whose interpretation of a matriarch's dream turned out to be the catalyst for the foundation of a new university and China's top school of mathematics. To which Jinzhen, of course, finds his way...By that point, if you can keep an open mind and trust that the author is leading you somewhere interesting, you're engrossed in Jinzhen's unusual personality and unusual -- astonishing -- abilities. I certainly was, and I felt for him when the authorities -- viewing his mind as merely a tool rather than as part of a person -- put him to work on an apparently unbreakable code in a remote, isolated location. The code is one enemy, but could a friend and mentor be another? Yes, there's suspense, but not in the sense of an action movie. To read and relish this novel, you need to put aside perceptions of what a suspense novel "should" be, and focus instead on this particular tale, as told by this particular novelist.Admittedly, the mathematical details here made my head spin. But the core story of Jinzhen's troubled past and troubled present was moving and the mystery -- not just the code but the personality of Jinzhen -- was gripping. At its heart, this seemed to me the tale of decoding a complex genius, rather than something as banal as unbreakable codes.Definitely worth reading for those prepared to deal with the unconventional narrative style, and wait for the author to make his revelations...
29 of 33 people found the following review helpful. Brilliant, enigmatic & weirdly whimsical By Patto The narrative starts with a fairy-tale-like account of the protagonist's famous family, in which genius and degeneracy appear in different generations. Mathematical genius, however, prevails in Rong Jinzehn, the illegitimate son of a murderer. Jinzehn is nothing like other people – cold, uncommunicative, crude, obsessive, naive. His unlovable personality is oddly lovable.The fairy tale turns into a spy story when Jinzehn is abruptly recruited by a top-secret intelligence agency and whisked off to a distant and tightly guarded compound. There he becomes a cryptologist and is assigned a seemly impossible code to break.But Decoded is as much a psychological novel as a tale of espionage. Mai Jia is portraying a man waging a war of the mind and endangering his own mind in the process. The villain of the piece is not some enemy agent but rather cryptology itself. Ciphers are seen as the work of the devil – an exercise of craftiness fed by the evil of humankind and its sinister intent.This novel is a metaphysical feast of ideas. It plays with the mysteries of mathematics, the relationship of genius and madness, the treacherous underbelly of patriotism and friendship, the nature of God, the power of deceit, the power of dreams...The narrative structure of the novel is brilliant – contrived to convince the reader that this is a true account, not a mere work of fiction. It's impossible not to believe in the cryptographer and his heartbreaking experiences.I read that it took Mai Jia ten years to write this book, and that it once ran over a million words. This doesn't surprise me. I have never encountered a more ambitious novel. Mai Jia delves into the elusive working of the mind with poetic abandon, all the while crafting a very good tale. There's even a love story, of sorts, among all the other enigmatic happenings.Decoded is itself like a code, concealing and revealing the secrets of humanity and society. I loved it.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. A Good Start But the Novel Disappoints By G. Miki Hayden I enjoyed and was touched by about the first third of the novel, the background to the so-called protagonist whose beginning in life was difficult to say the least. But for those wanting to read a Chinese thriller involving its secret, code-breaking agencies, this really isn't it. The structure fails--in my Western view--from beginning to end. I accepted the opening because, after all, not everything has to be the same as the mainstream American publishers insist on these days, and as I said, I was moved by the story of a brilliant young man with emotional (perhaps hardwired) problems. But once the supposed spy story gets underway, the novel flops. If you want a Chinese mystery thriller, read Qiu Xiaolong--his Death of a Red Heroine, or others.In addition to being disappointed by the novel itself, I was horrified by the editing. In fact, it's obvious that the translators, once they were finished, weren't edited, and moreover, the book wasn't edited for the American publication. I could pick up any page and point to errors.I just can't recommend this novel as either a window into Chinese espionage or as a thriller.
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