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A review by jasonfurman
Decoded by Mai Jia
5.0
An excellent Chinese novel, it begins as a multigenerational saga about several generations of mathematicians in a N University in the provincial capital C City, but then goes on to focus on one of them--Rong Jinzhen, the son of "the Killer" (a bad offshoot of the family) and a strange woman. At a young age Jinzhen teaches himself arithmetic and then proceeds rapidly to become a rare genius who can solve his way through any math problem. He begins research with a Polish-born professor at N University but is then taken away to work at the highly secretive cryptography section of of Unit 701. When there he brilliantly cracks a code named "Purple" which was devised by his former Polish-born professor. Cracking Purple is described as a glorious historical achievement, but then their adversaries shift to "Black" which, together with an accidental event, ultimately breaks him and drives him mad.
The story is mostly told by a not fully omniscient narrator with extended passages reported as transcripts from interviews. In the final part of the book we get to hear directly from Jinzhen through one of his notebooks.
Not really an espionage story or a thriller or a love story, this book defies genres but provides a convincing depiction of genius and obsession and a window into slices of the last century in China. It also creates larger than life characters and displays a wide range of sympathies.
The story is mostly told by a not fully omniscient narrator with extended passages reported as transcripts from interviews. In the final part of the book we get to hear directly from Jinzhen through one of his notebooks.
Not really an espionage story or a thriller or a love story, this book defies genres but provides a convincing depiction of genius and obsession and a window into slices of the last century in China. It also creates larger than life characters and displays a wide range of sympathies.