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Walking through the capital's university district, Yu Hua looks more like a migrant worker than one of China's best-selling authors. His hair short and spiky, his clothes simple and plain, he does not fit in -- and clearly doesn't make much of an effort to do so.
余华走在北京的大学区里，看上去更像是一个农民工，而不像是中国一流的畅销书作家。他短短的头发直竖起来，衣服简单而朴素，而且不大合身──很显然，他也没在这方面下什么功夫。
That attitude extends to his view of contemporary society, which he says is so sick that a writer can't pretend to be a doctor. Instead, the best one can do is admit that one is ill and try to describe the symptoms. This ethos underpins 'Brothers,' a sprawling, two-part novel that has just come out in an English translation in the U.S. and will be published in April in Britain.
这种态度延伸到了他对当代社会的看法。他说，这个社会已经无药可救，作家也不能再扮作社会的医生。一个人所能做的就是承认自己有病，并且尽力去描述病情。这一思想贯穿着《兄弟》，一部分为上下两部的长篇巨制。这部小说的英文版刚刚在美国问世，今年四月该书还将在英国上市。
The book is a manic, hyperactive account of two brothers whose stories span the past 50 years of hardcore communism and today's no-holds-barred capitalism. 'At times the novel is grotesque and crude, but there's nothing I write about that is more absurd than what goes on in society,' he says as we rush past crowds of university students en route to a restaurant that serves the cuisine of Mr. Yu's native Zhejiang province.
余华以一种疯狂而亢奋的笔触叙述了两兄弟的故事。整个小说从过去纯粹的共产主义写到今天不折不扣的资本主义，横跨了五十年。余华在我们匆匆穿过一群群大学生，去往一家经营浙江菜的餐厅途中说，这部小说有时候显得怪诞而粗俗，但社会上真实发生的事情比我笔下所有的故事更为荒诞不经。浙江是余华的老家。
Politics is one of the 46-year-old's main interests. His most famous work, 'To Live,' is a brutal, mythic tale of a man who loses all to the political movements that tore across China during the first three decades of Communist Party rule, but manages to keep going through his sheer will to live. The book, which was filmed by the star director Zhang Yimou, remains a bestseller in China. His other works are symbolic almost to the point of caricature. His 1995 'Chronicles of a Blood Merchant' tells the story of a man who sells his blood to get by. 'Cries in the Drizzle,' published in 2003, is about a boy who seems to bring bad luck to everyone he touches.
政治是46岁的余华最感兴趣的领域之一。他最知名的作品《活着》讲述的是一个虚构的残忍故事。在共产党执政的头三十年里，故事的主人公在席卷中国的政治运动中失去了自己的所有，但他凭着活下去的决心生存了下来。这部小说至今在中国还是本畅销书，这个故事还被著名导演张艺谋搬上了大荧幕。他的其他作品很有象征意味，简直和漫画有异曲同工之妙。他1995年的小说《许三观卖血记》讲述了一个男人为维持生计而卖血的故事。2003年出版的《在细雨中呼喊》是关于一个男孩的故事。这个男孩碰谁一下，谁似乎就会倒霉。
'Brothers' is strongly in that vein. It follows two half-brothers whose lives are almost a parody of reform-era China: one a crass, vulgar businessman who succeeds through corruption and brutality, and fetishizes virgins; the other a meek man who ends up victimized by higher economic forces. When it came out in 2005 and 2006, it elicited protests from literary critics across the country, who said the novel makes heroes of villains and descends to the level of fart jokes for humor. There was even a collection of essays published by a group of critics called 'Pulling Yu Hua's Teeth,' a play on his first profession of dentistry.
《兄弟》延续了这样的风格。小说中那对异父异母兄弟的生活简直就是对改革时期中国戏剧式的再现：弟弟是个粗鲁、邋遢的生意人，靠着钻空子和一股子狠劲儿发家，内心还有处女情结；老实的哥哥则最终成为经济大转型时代的牺牲品。这本小说的上下两部分别在2005年和2006年问世后，遭到了全国上下文学批评家们的反对声浪。他们认为，这部小说把无赖歌颂成英雄，而且为了搏人一笑小说沦落到了粗俗的地步。一些文学批评家甚至还出版了一本名为《给余华拔牙》的评论集，嘲弄余华的第一份职业是牙医。
Mr. Yu shrugs off the disapproval. Most of his critics, he says, are young people who are either ashamed he's airing China's dirty linen, or don't even realize that the corrupt backwaters he describes still exist in modern China. 'This generation that grew up in the 1980s only experienced a China that was getting better and better,' he says. 'They thought their lives represented all of China. But this is a mistake. China has over 100 million people earning less than 800 yuan ($125) a year.'
余华对这些批评并不在意。他说，大多数批评他的人是年轻人，他们或者不喜欢看到他揭露中国黑暗的一面，或者根本没有意识到他在书中描写的那些阴暗面依然存在于现代的中国。他说，80后的这一代人只感受到了一个越变越好的中国。他们认为全中国人都过着和他们一样的生活。但那是错误的。中国有超过1亿人的年收入不足人民币800元（合125美元）。
