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A review by cyn0514
Decoded by Mai Jia
3.0
My first impression was this book is wrongly catagorized as "spy-thriller" genre in its english edition. In my mind, this book belonged in magical realism genre. It has all the marks, i.e. the abundance of background, the story line that spans over generations and of course the supranatural element in form of dreaming and dreams interpretations. Reading the blurp I was expecting for one thing, and then fondly surprised to found another. It was like [b:One Hundred Years of Solitude|320|One Hundred Years of Solitude|Gabriel García Márquez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327881361l/320._SX50_.jpg|3295655], cryptographic-chinese style.
The main story was about an unfortunate man, a math-genius, who worked as a cryptograper, succesfully decoding (almost) two high-level ciphers code, PURPLE and BLACK, and in the end being consumed by them. But like I said before, this was a magical reality, so the story naturally began with his great-great-great grandmother having a dream!
Written in mixed style of narative and epistolary, the secret personality of Rong Jizhen was slowly decoded. His sad beginning of life, the odd childhood, the family who in the end had to be separated, his amazing works, and the ill-fated end of life. Wretched wretched fate he had.
This is a sad and tragic story, but just like Borges or Gabo would tell one, it's just life, and its beautiful on its own way.
Just my two cents about the back bone of the story, well, I did took cryptography for one class back in univ, and by the end of the semester, I didn't fancy it. Yeah, it was just very basic knowledge, and it was hard and all, but more than that, I felt the sharp coldness around it. To work, to decode things his entire adult life, not to mention the secrecy and the burden, no wonder that these people cracks under pressure. Reminds me of Alan Turing in the movie The Imitation Game or John Nash in The Beautiful Mind.
*Reading this as a part of #AsianReadaton 2020 Challenge 1, read a book by Asian author. This is my first time reading the work of author Mai Jia, and I quite pleased by it. But really, I don't think that the english translation is good enough to transfer all the oriental chinese nuance. Imho.
The main story was about an unfortunate man, a math-genius, who worked as a cryptograper, succesfully decoding (almost) two high-level ciphers code, PURPLE and BLACK, and in the end being consumed by them. But like I said before, this was a magical reality, so the story naturally began with his great-great-great grandmother having a dream!
Written in mixed style of narative and epistolary, the secret personality of Rong Jizhen was slowly decoded. His sad beginning of life, the odd childhood, the family who in the end had to be separated, his amazing works, and the ill-fated end of life. Wretched wretched fate he had.
This is a sad and tragic story, but just like Borges or Gabo would tell one, it's just life, and its beautiful on its own way.
Just my two cents about the back bone of the story, well, I did took cryptography for one class back in univ, and by the end of the semester, I didn't fancy it. Yeah, it was just very basic knowledge, and it was hard and all, but more than that, I felt the sharp coldness around it. To work, to decode things his entire adult life, not to mention the secrecy and the burden, no wonder that these people cracks under pressure. Reminds me of Alan Turing in the movie The Imitation Game or John Nash in The Beautiful Mind.
*Reading this as a part of #AsianReadaton 2020 Challenge 1, read a book by Asian author. This is my first time reading the work of author Mai Jia, and I quite pleased by it. But really, I don't think that the english translation is good enough to transfer all the oriental chinese nuance. Imho.