To some extent, novelists are best poised to understand globalization. The free flow of products, talents, and information has created some similar life experience. Multinational chains connect metropolis. People enjoy the same latte of Starbucks across the oceans and seas. New MacBook models are showcased in all Apple Stores. Amazon and Netflix revolutionized publication and TV industry. Car makers of Japan dominate North America, dwarfing local giants like Ford or GE.On the other hand, the gospel of prosperity does not benefit the world evenly. While the well-to-dos enjoy a luxurious and convenient life, the have-nots are deprived of future, opportunities, and even their identities. New technologies and trade bring new jobs but also smashing old ones. Demographic changes and culture diversification threaten social coherence in many nations. Immigration and refugees ignite populist backlashes among developed countries.Those phenomena appear to be new challenges of this millennia. However, one century ago, Joseph Conrad had already prophesied a world like ours. In his fiction Heart of Darkness,he revealed some most profound contradictions of modernization and globalization. The western colonists in this novel portrayed themselves as messengers of civilization. One of them was once an idealist believing in spreading science and trade all across Africa. Somehow he becomes disillusioned and corrupted by his power and ambition. He became a tyrant, ruling local African natives. The metaphors of Heart of Darknesswill not be outdated. Today we seem to live in a whole new world, actually, we just enter the world Conrad has described hundred years ago.I always believe that one could have eyes of “novelist” without writing a single fiction. What are the eyes of the novelist? For me, it means the power to reconstruct the reality with words. A novelist is a lifelong liar, he creates the time that doesn’t exist, he reveals worlds unknown to other people, and he envisions futures yet to come. Historians record past catastrophes with saddened hearts. Alarmed economists predict the possible future crisis. Compared to them, novelists have some unique advantages. For novelists’ eyes have traveled beyond time and space, standing in the border between past and future. That border is the rift of change. Nearly everyone fears to be consumed by this black hole while novelists are gazing at it joyfully. Like George Eliot once claimed: “We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive was born.” I believe that in this era of globalization, we need the eyes of novelist more than ever. We should pioneer the new possibilities offered by innovations while keeping an eye on those left behind. We should explore new places while staying humbled and curious. Only when we learn to observe things like outsiders, like a novelist, we can understand the past and embrace the future.Which of the following CANNOT reflect the uneven benefits of prosperity?