Humans fight to be "human"
Young writer Phat Duong, with many worries and anxieties about modern life, wrote the short story collection 2 people in a drawer. The book is 200 pages thick and published by Tre Publishing House.
2 people in a drawer create a postmodern fantasy world to illuminate and contemplate reality and human inhibitions.
Through each page, readers will see the struggle for people to be "human" in a world that forces them to become indifferent and empty machines.
The book consists of 12 short stories, opening up each world, each imaginary space full of magic.
Among them is a future where humans must hide in floating cabinets where "each compartment is allowed to hold only two creatures."
There are cities where people have to wear masks to work and have to take exams to win a place to live there.
There is an hourglass that turns time, there are "ruins" for people to go in and pick up their faces, there are "hotels on the backs of cats".
Cover of the book "2 people in a drawer" (Photo: Tre Publishing House).
By telling stories that intertwine reality and fantasy, Phat Duong cleverly blends the fantasy world with reality.
In it, the employee either goes to work on boring days or competes for a raise; the student buys old books, stays in a boarding house, sits in a coffee shop discussing group assignments; the country people crowd into the city hoping to change their lives.
The above mixture creates a world that is both strange and familiar, with things that seem absurd but are gradually becoming normal in human reality.
Familiar is the monotony of work, the indifference of people, the coldness of competition for survival or advancement, the cruelty of time. But those things are pushed to the extreme by Phat Duong, people lose their identity, lose humanity, lose themselves, lose the future.
In the short story "The Bookworm" , the main character's world is gradually invaded by bookworms who specialize in gnawing on "shallow, superficial" books, and then he himself is gradually gnawed by them and turns into a bookworm.
Reading Phat Duong's stories, readers will be startled to see themselves in them. The young writer seems to have explored to the end the worries and fears of everyday life.
Readers are forced to look back and make a choice: to be indifferent or to confront, to be fake or sincere, to be indifferent or determined. When human life is no different from that of a robot, it is also the time when the human side of each individual emerges.
Phat Duong has demonstrated a rich, beautiful and surprising imagination. A work that is startling with the sound of the planet exploding and the whispering like a cut from the author's consciousness.
Young literature book series of Tre Publishing House (Photo: Tre Publishing House).
Postmodern fantasy elements
In 2 people in a drawer , the author borrowed the postmodern world to talk about the modern world, providing a mirror for people to see reality and themselves clearly.
In that postmodern world, convenience, uniformity and abundance are put first. Everything is "optimized" so that each world can operate in an orderly and developed way.
But in return, humans no longer have human identity. Humans are just machines that obey rules, perform their functions, and stay in their "closets".
The scary thing is that through Phat Duong's pen that blends reality and fantasy, readers will have the feeling that the world is about to become reality and not just exist on paper.
It seems that in the blink of an eye, a person will turn into a worm, into a number, into emptiness.
The book urges people to wake up, not accept their fate, escape the cycle of life and keep the humanity in themselves.
Phat Duong (real name Duong Thanh Phat), 28 years old, is a member of the Can Tho City Writers Association, one of the outstanding young writers of the Mekong Delta region.
He has won awards in many writing competitions such as the 6th 20-Year-Old Literature Competition in 2018, Half Fills the World...
Some published works: Naturally drunk , Red nails, Open eyes and dream, 100 windows .
Tre Publishing House publishes four titles by young domestic authors, in the direction of accompanying Vietnamese authors.
The four works include: Flying Camel by Vo Dang Khoa; Variant by Dinh Khoa; Two People in a Drawer by Phat Duong and A Place Without Snow by Huynh Trong Khang.
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