怎样在中国发大财

    如果说过去10年以来，小说中最常见的隐喻是“911小说”，我们现在或许正在目睹下一波潮流的开始：亚洲的成功故事（或者至少是追逐成功的故事）。

    我们在春天撰文评述了两部近期出版的小说：凯文•关的《疯狂的亚洲富人》( Crazy Rich Asians )与穆赫辛•哈米德的《亚洲崛起之际的暴富之道》(How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia)。没过多久，华裔作家欧大旭的新书《五星级亿万富翁》(Five Star Billionaire)就来到了我们的案头。一如2011年以棒球为主题的畅销书《防守的艺术》(The Art of Fielding)——书名取自小说主人公珍视的一本游击手手册——欧大旭的这部小说也是向一本虚构的指南书《一位五星级亿万富翁的秘密》(Secrets of a Five Star Billionaire)致敬：叙述者循序渐进地传授了发家致富的秘诀。

    如果这个主题听起来很熟悉，那很可能是因为哈米德的书同样是以一部虚假的自我完善指南作为写作架构的。

    但相较于哈米德的那本著作，欧大旭的新书更加详尽，更易理解。哈米德以一个无名的亚洲国家（很可能是巴基斯坦，但书中并未透露）作为故事背景，其散文体缺乏厚度，几乎散发着一股功利主义的气息。相比之下，《五星级亿万富翁》的背景是一座微光闪烁，蓬勃发展的城市：上海，这是一个欧大旭让我们觉得一切皆有可能发生的地方。

    在哈米德的书中，叙述者被删除了，作者以匿名身份向读者提供冷酷的建议。欧大旭的叙述者则真实得令人感动（甚至可能让人不适）：沃尔特•赵，一位房地产大亨。他撰写了一本语气非常友好，颇具启发性的致富指南，但他的行为与之并不匹配。在沃尔特的财富人生中，他践踏了每一位妨碍其发财的人——或者至少与他狭路相逢的人。在小说人物中，有两个人效仿着沃尔特的某些雄心：菲比，一个令人厌恶的女孩。她带着沃尔特的一本书来到上海，愿意使用另一个女孩的身份证获得工作；颖惠，一位精明的女商人。她白手起家，意志坚强，但过于轻信他人。另外两个人物，贾斯汀和加里，更加倒霉：前者发现自己无力承受家族企业的重负，后者则是一位过气的歌手。

    小说的视角不断转换，从一个人物到另一个人物，但有时似乎不太流畅——在当代小说中，这是另一个颇为流行的主题，比如《让伟大的世界旋转》(Let the Great World Spin)和《恶棍来访》( A Visit From the Goon Squad)。虽然这种写作策略据说已经过时，但对于一部以中国（一个持续吸引并影响美国商业领域的国家）为背景的著作而言，它却是一个恰切得诡异的架构。

    从朱文的《我爱美元》( I Love Dollars )，到卫慧的《上海宝贝》( Shanghai Baby)，再到几乎所有的莫言作品，争夺财富已经成为通俗小说的重要主题之一。莫言去年摘得诺贝尔文学奖桂冠。此后，以对中国观察深刻、情节喧哗著称的莫言小说就开始风靡美国。

    《五星级亿万富翁》自信地步入这个群体。这部小说对于中国庞大经济景观的辛辣描述尤其令人信服——这里不是硅谷。欧大旭笔下的人物与哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)的精英们简直是云泥之别。他们是一群奋斗者，只要还能，他们就会试图从上海攫取一切能够攫取的东西。

    If the most common trope in fiction in the past 10 years has been the "9/11 novel," we may now be seeing the beginnings of the next wave: stories of success (or at least the hunt for it) in Asia.

    On the heels of two recent novels we reviewed in the spring, Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians and Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, comes Tash Aw's newest book, Five Star Billionaire. As with the bestselling 2011 baseball novel The Art of Fielding, which takes its title from a shortstop's manual that the novel's protagonist cherishes, Aw's book pays homage to a fictional guidebook, Secrets of a Five Star Billionaire: the narrator imparts step-by-step tips on how to get rich.

    If the theme sounds familiar, it may well be because Hamid's book is likewise written as a faux self-improvement guide.

    Aw's novel, though, is more intimate and accessible than Hamid's, who sets his book in a nameless Asian country (likely Pakistan, but it isn't divulged) and whose prose is almost utilitarian in its spareness. The background for Five Star Billionaire, by contrast, is the glimmering, booming city of Shanghai -- a place where Aw makes us feel that anything is possible.

    Hamid's narrator is removed and anonymous, ruthless in his advice to the reader. Aw's narrator is affectingly, if uncomfortably, real: Walter Chao, a real estate mogul whose friendly, instructive tone in the get-rich guides he writes doesn't match his actions. As Walter amasses his fortune, he stomps on everyone who gets in his way -- or at least crosses paths with him. Two of these figures echo some of Walter's ambition: Phoebe, a scrappy girl who has come to Shanghai armed with one of Walter's books, is willing to use another girl's ID card to get a job; Yinghui, a shrewd businesswoman, is self-made and strong-willed, but also too trusting. Two others -- Justin, who finds himself unable to live up to the burdens of his family business, and Gary, a disgraced singer -- are more hapless.

    The perspective switches, though not quite seamlessly, from one character to the next -- another theme that has been in vogue in contemporary fiction (think: Let the Great World Spin and A Visit From the Goon Squad). And while it's a device that has arguably been played out, it's an oddly fitting structure for a book set in China, a country that continues to fascinate and influence the American business sphere.

    The idea of the struggle for wealth there has made its way into popular fiction, from Zhu Wen's I Love Dollars to Wei Hu's Shanghai Baby to pretty much everything written by Mo Yan, who won last year's Nobel Prize in literature and whose incisive, raucous novels about China have since become popular in the States.

    Five Star Billionaire steps confidently into this crowd, and its mordant depiction of China's sprawling economic scene -- this is no Silicon Valley -- is particularly compelling. Aw's characters are a far cry from the lot at Harvard Business School. They are strivers looking to collect what they can from Shanghai, while they can.