In his speech, Jack Liao, vice-president of Blancpain China, says, "The concept of 'time's forking paths' can be simply understood as the idea that when you make a decision, it creates a divergence in the timeline.

"In 2018, Blancpain decided to co-launch the Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize with Imaginist. Over the past eight years, we've faced many forks and challenges, but as long as we organizers approach all uncertainties with our original intentions, professionalism, authority and fairness, we can successfully manage the literary prize time and again," he says.

The other four finalists this year were Li Lu's The Pupa Incident of 1997, Shao Dong's Bushangsuo De Ren (Unlocked People), Zhang Yueran's Swan Hotel and Zi He's Dancing Wild Bees.

Through analogies to time, Shi described the initial impressions the five works left on him: Dancing Wild Bees is the "sound of time"; Swan Hotel is the "structure of time", an elegant novel with an international perspective; Unlocked People is the "tool of time", akin to a watchmaker skillfully adjusting a clock; Spring Will Never Fall is the "secret of time", with time flowing through different generations, capturing the balance between secrecy and revelation with a restrained narrative; and The Pupa Incident of 1997 is an "appeal to time", incorporating the various directions of time, both seen and unseen.

Contact the writer at yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn