Chen Yan 
Star 

The Star is a heart-touching book about destiny. The author adopts a deeply perceptive style to tell the adventurous life story of a famous Shanxi Opera star — Yi Qin-E in almost a half century, and her deep historical connection with the up-and-downs of the Shanxi Opera and the whole era. The fate and destiny of those main characters during the transitional era are fully unfolded, which are both inspiring and lamentable. The complicated storyline, those fresh and vivid characters, the use of local dialect and slang, demonstrate the author’s familiarity with life and mature narrative skill. In the conflict between poetry and opera, virtual and real, matters and emotions, noise and loneliness, joy and sorrow, incisiveness and humor, worldliness and glory, the author incorporates a "grand theory" which has illuminated the cultural spirit and life experience of our people and our motherland. The author looks up to China’s classical literature and ideology, and writes about the eternal quietness, hidden in the madding crowd of human life. By telling the life story of one character, the fate of various characters is unfolded by the author. The life experience and spiritual history of Yi Qin-E for over 50 years also serve as an example about one possible solution to adapt classical philosophy and ideology in the modern era: even though she faces internal and external challenges, and suffers from physical and spiritual fatigue, and sometimes thinks of withdrawing from the society, but she always feels responsible for the society, and therefore she did not retreat into Buddhism, Zen or Taoism. Instead, she found her spiritual support from Confucianistic life struggle. In the world of this novel, we can hear the bleak and painful voice of human society, but we also embrace the eternal hope and unremitting strength. This novel has become the mighty and torrential human voice.