{"title":"Modern Chinese Literature From Taiwan","description":"\u003cp\u003eDiscover compelling voices from Taiwan's vibrant literary scene. This collection showcases modern Chinese literature exploring identity, history, and culture. A perfect entry point for readers seeking nuanced perspectives.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"orphan-of-asia-book-zhuoliu-wu-9780231137263","title":"Orphan of Asia","description":"Born in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, raised in the scholarly traditions of ancient China by his grandfather but forced into the Japanese educational system, Hu Taiming, the protagonist of Orphan of Asia, ultimately finds himself estranged from all three cultures. Wu's autobiographical novel, completed in 1945, is widely regarded as a classic of modern Asian literature and a groundbreaking expression of the postwar Taiwanese national consciousness. Originally written in Japanese and now translated into English for the first time, Orphan of Asia offers a powerful depiction of the political, cultural, and psychological impact of colonialism. Orphan of Asia begins during Taiming's childhood in Taiwan, which has been annexed to Japan only recently. Taiming eventually makes his mark in the colonial Japanese educational system and graduates from a prestigious college. However, he finds that his Japanese education and his adoption of modern ways have alienated him from his family and native village. He becomes a teacher in the Japanese colonial system but soon realizes that there is something seriously wrong with the status quo. He quits his post but finds that, having repudiated his roots, he doesn't seem to belong anywhere.  Thus begins Taiming's long journey for his rightful place. But neither in Japan, where he goes to study physics in the belief that technology represents the future, nor in mainland China, where he marries and has a daughter, does he ever come to feel at home or find his calling. Although he assiduously avoids politics, Taiming can't help being caught up in the conflicts that shaped modern East Asian history. He is accused of spying for both China and Japan after hostilities breakout between the two countries, and he witnesses the effects of Japanese imperial expansion, the horrors of war, and the sense of anger and powerlessness felt by those living under colonial rule.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49555879428369,"sku":"GOR006671920","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50253183549713,"sku":"CIN0231137265G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000516542737,"sku":"NIN9780231137263","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51072774504721,"sku":"CIN0231137265VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231137265.jpg?v=1750973556"},{"product_id":"remains-of-life-book-wu-he-9780231166010","title":"Remains of Life","description":"On October 27, 1930, during a sports meet at Musha Elementary School on an aboriginal reservation in the mountains of Taiwan, a bloody uprising occurred unlike anything Japan had experienced in its colonial history. Before noon, the Atayal tribe had slain one hundred and thirty-four Japanese in a headhunting ritual. The Japanese responded with a militia of three thousand, heavy artillery, airplanes, and internationally banned poisonous gas, bringing the tribe to the brink of genocide.  Nearly seventy years later, Chen Guocheng, a writer known as Wu He, or \"Dancing Crane,\" investigated the Musha Incident to search for any survivors and their descendants. Remains of Life, a milestone of Chinese experimental literature, is a fictionalized account of the writer's experiences among the people who live their lives in the aftermath of this history. Written in a stream-of-consciousness style, it contains no paragraph breaks and only a handful of sentences. Shifting among observations about the people the author meets, philosophical musings, and fantastical leaps of imagination, Remains of Life is a powerful literary reckoning with one of the darkest chapters in Taiwan's colonial history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49570690466065,"sku":"GOR013684556","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/023116601X.jpg?v=1750813127"},{"product_id":"notes-of-a-desolate-man-book-chu-t-ien-wen-9780231116084","title":"Notes of a Desolate Man","description":"Winner of the coveted China Times Novel Prize, this postmodern, first-person tale of a contemporary Taiwanese gay man reflecting on his life, loves, and intellectual influences is among the most important recent novels in Taiwan.  The narrator, Xiao Shao, recollects a series of friends and lovers, as he watches his childhood friend, Ah Yao, succumb to complications from AIDS. The brute fact of Ah Yao's death focuses Shao's simultaneously erudite and erotic reflections magnetically on the core theme of mortality. By turns humorous and despondent, the narrator struggles to come to terms with Ah Yao's risky lifestyle, radical political activism, and eventual death; the fragility of romantic love; the awesome power of eros; the solace of writing; the cold ennui of a younger generation enthralled only by video games; and life on the edge of mainstream Taiwanese society. His feverish journey through forests of metaphor and allusion-from Fellini and Levi-Strauss to classical Chinese poetry-serves as a litany protecting him from the ravages of time and finitude. Impressive in scope and detail, Notes of a Desolate Man employs the motif of its characters' marginalized sexuality to highlight Taiwan's vivid and fragile existence on the periphery of mainland China. Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin's masterful translation brings Chu T'ien-wen's lyrical and inventive pastiche of political, poetic, and sexual desire to the English-speaking world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49626445676817,"sku":"GOR001991580","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51752467562769,"sku":"CIN023111608XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52884305314065,"sku":"CIN023111608XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/023111608X.jpg?v=1751101261"},{"product_id":"faraway-book-jeremy-tiang-9780231193955","title":"Faraway","description":"In Taiwanese writer Lo Yi-Chins Faraway, a fictionalized version of the author finds himself stranded in mainland China attempting to bring his comatose father home. Lo offers a deft portrayal of the rift between China and Taiwan through an intimate view of a father-son relationship that bridges this divide.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49629976854801,"sku":"GOR012884372","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49740853248273,"sku":"NGR9780231193955","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49940905492753,"sku":"CIN0231193955G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231193955.jpg?v=1777111984"},{"product_id":"membranes-book-ari-larissa-heinrich-9780231195713","title":"The Membranes","description":"First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropesheirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologiesinto a sensitive portrait of one young womans quest for self-understanding.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49756641067281,"sku":"GOR011631039","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49874113790225,"sku":"NGR9780231195713","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49973812363537,"sku":"CIN0231195710G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51282375115025,"sku":"GOR012023834","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52880330424593,"sku":"CIN0231195710LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53019135901969,"sku":"GOR014698468","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53158209257745,"sku":"CIN0231195710VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231195710.jpg?v=1751426391"},{"product_id":"wintry-night-book-qiao-li-9780231122016","title":"Wintry Night","description":"An epic spanning more than half a century of Taiwan's history, this breathtaking historical novel traces the fortunes of the Pengs, a family of Hakka Chinese settlers, across three generations from the 1890s, just before Taiwan was ceded to Japan as a result of the Sino-Japanese war, through World War II. Li Qiao brilliantly re-creates the dramatic world of these pioneers-and the colonization of Taiwan itself-exploring their relationships with the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan and their struggle to establish their own ethnic and political identities.  This carefully researched work of fiction draws upon Li's own experiences and family history, as well as oral and written histories of the era. Originally published in Chinese as a trilogy, this newly translated edition is an abridgement for English-speaking readers and marks the work's first appearance in the English-speaking world. It was well-received in Taiwan as an honest-and influential-recreation of Taiwan's history before the relocation of the Republic of China from the mainland to Taiwan. Because Li's saga is so deeply imbued with the unique culture and complex history of Taiwan, an introduction explaining the cultural and historical background of the novel is included to help orient the reader to this amazingly rich cultural context. This informative introduction and the sweeping saga of the novel itself together provide an important view of Taiwan's little known colonial experience.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49882205520145,"sku":"GOR010044750","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50023683817745,"sku":"GOR005268615","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53371779809553,"sku":"CIN0231122012VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231122012.jpg?v=1750940377"},{"product_id":"notes-of-a-desolate-man-book-chu-t-ien-wen-9780231116091","title":"Notes of a Desolate Man","description":"Winner of the coveted China Times Novel Prize, this postmodern, first-person tale of a contemporary Taiwanese gay man reflecting on his life, loves, and intellectual influences is among the most important recent novels in Taiwan.  The narrator, Xiao Shao, recollects a series of friends and lovers, as he watches his childhood friend, Ah Yao, succumb to complications from AIDS. The brute fact of Ah Yao's death focuses Shao's simultaneously erudite and erotic reflections magnetically on the core theme of mortality. By turns humorous and despondent, the narrator struggles to come to terms with Ah Yao's risky lifestyle, radical political activism, and eventual death; the fragility of romantic love; the awesome power of eros; the solace of writing; the cold ennui of a younger generation enthralled only by video games; and life on the edge of mainstream Taiwanese society. His feverish journey through forests of metaphor and allusion-from Fellini and Levi-Strauss to classical Chinese poetry-serves as a litany protecting him from the ravages of time and finitude. Impressive in scope and detail, Notes of a Desolate Man employs the motif of its characters' marginalized sexuality to highlight Taiwan's vivid and fragile existence on the periphery of mainland China. Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin's masterful translation brings Chu T'ien-wen's lyrical and inventive pastiche of political, poetic, and sexual desire to the English-speaking world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50154776363281,"sku":"CIN0231116098G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000515952913,"sku":"NIN9780231116091","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53120318275857,"sku":"CIN0231116098VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231116098.jpg?v=1750844109"},{"product_id":"old-capital-book-t-ien-hsin-chu-9780231141123","title":"The Old Capital","description":"Chu T'ien-hsin's The Old Capital is a brilliant evocation of Taiwan's literature of nostalgia and remembrance. The novel is centered on the question, \"Is it possible that none of your memories count?\" and explores the reliability of remembrances and the thin line that separates fact from fantasy.  Comprised of four thematically linked stories and a novella, The Old Capital focuses on the cultural and psychological realities of contemporary Taiwan. The stories are narrated by individuals who share an aching nostalgia for a time long past. Strolling through modern Taipei, they return to the lost, imperfect memories called forth by the smells and sensations of their city, and try to reconcile themselves to their rapidly changing world. The novella is built on the memories and recollections of a woman trying to make sense of herself and her homeland. After a trip to Kyoto to meet with a friend, she returns to Taipei, where, having been mistaken for a Japanese tourist, she revisits the sites of her youth using a Japanese colonial map of the city. Seeing Taipei anew, the narrator confronts the complex nature of her identity, embodied in the contrast between a serene and preserved Kyoto and a thoroughly modernized and chaotic Taipei. The growing angst of these narrators reflects a deeper anxiety over the legacy of Japan and America in Taiwan. The titles of the stories themselves-\"Death in Venice,\" \"Man of La Mancha,\" \"Breakfast at Tiffany's,\" \"Hungarian Water\"-reveal the strong currents of influence that run throughout the collection and shape the content and texture of the writing. In his meticulous translation, Howard Goldblatt captures the casual, intimate feel of Chu T'ien-hsin's writing while also maintaining its multiple layers of meaning. An intertextual masterpiece, The Old Capital is a moving and highly sensual meditation on the elasticity of memory and its power to shape personal identity.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50154776756497,"sku":"CIN0231141122G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53005944652049,"sku":"NGR9780231141123","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231141122.jpg?v=1751005803"},{"product_id":"taste-of-apples-book-huang-huang-chun-ming-9780231122610","title":"The Taste of Apples","description":"From the preeminent writer of Taiwanese nativist fiction and the leading translator of Chinese literature come these poignant accounts of everyday life in rural and small-town Taiwan. Huang is frequently cited as one of the most original and gifted storytellers in the Chinese language, and these selections reveal his genius. In \"The Two Sign Painters,\" TV reporters ambush two young workers from the country taking a break atop a twenty-four-story building. \"His Son's Big Doll\" introduces the tortured soul inside a walking advertisement, and in \"Xiaoqi's Cap\" a dissatisfied pressure-cooker salesman is fascinated by a young schoolgirl.  Huang's characters-generally the uneducated and disadvantaged who must cope with assaults on their traditionalism, hostility from their urban brethren and, of course, the debilitating effects of poverty-come to life in all their human uniqueness, free from idealization.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50197957738769,"sku":"CIN0231122616VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51592259535121,"sku":"CIN0231122616G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52980349829393,"sku":"NGR9780231122610","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231122616.jpg?v=1750877013"},{"product_id":"my-south-seas-sleeping-beauty-book-guixing-zhang-9780231140584","title":"My South Seas Sleeping Beauty","description":"My South Seas Sleeping Beauty is a captivating coming-of-age tale set in the magical jungles of Borneo. Told through the vivid recollections of a Chinese-Malay youth, the novel recounts the life of Su Qi, a troubled, sensitive son of a wealthy family, and exemplifies the imaginative range of one of Taiwan's most innovative writers. \"There were all sorts of stories about how my younger sister died,\" Su Qi begins, hinting at the power of memory to bend and refract truth. Yet whichever the real story may be, the fact is that the death of Su Qi's sister created an irrevocable rift in Su Qi's family, driving his father into the arms of aboriginal women and his mother into a world of her own invention. In an effort to escape the oppression of home, Su Qi loses himself in the surrounding jungle, full of Communist guerillas and strange tropical fauna. The jungle further blurs the line between fantasy and reality for Su Qi, until he meets Chunxi, the beautiful, frail daughter of his father's best friend. Chunxi is an oasis of kindness and honesty in an otherwise cruel and evasive world, but after a bizarre accident, Chunxi falls into a deep coma, and Su Qui flees to Taiwan. In college Su Qi meets Keyi, a vivacious siren who helps Su Qi forget not only his violent past but also the colorful tales of his youth. When a family member dies, however, Su Qi is pulled back to the jungles of Borneo where he begins to unravel the secrets of his family's past-a story stranger than any fairy tale-and learns that his cherished dream of awakening his beloved Chunxi may be more than just a fantasy. Influenced by the lyricism of William Faulkner and the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, My South Seas Sleeping Beauty is a deeply evocative exploration of sexuality and identity and a masterful reworking of Chinese and Western myth. Valerie Jaffee's careful translation retains all the tone and detail of the original work and provides rare access to a new and exciting generation of Chinese writers born in Southeast Asia.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50207852200209,"sku":"CIN0231140584G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231140584.jpg?v=1751228215"},{"product_id":"wild-kids-book-ta-chun-chang-9780231120975","title":"Wild Kids","description":"These two searingly funny and unsettling portraits of teenagers beyond the control and largely beneath the notice of adults in 1980s Taiwan are the first English translations of works by Taiwan's most famous and best-selling literary cult figure. Chang Ta-chun's intricate narrative and keen, ironic sense of humor poignantly and piercingly convey the disillusionment and cynicism of modern Taiwanese youth.  Interweaving the events between the birth of the narrator's younger sister and her abortion at the age of nineteen, the first novel, My Kid Sister, evokes the complex emotional impressions of youth and the often bizarre social dilemmas of adolescence. Combining discussions of fate, existentialism, sexual awakening, and everyday \"absurdities\" in a typically dysfunctional household, it documents the loss of innocence and the deconstruction of a family.  In Wild Child, fourteen-year-old Hou Shichun drops out of school, runs away from home, and descends into the Taiwanese underworld, where he encounters an oddball assortment of similarly lost adolescents in desperate circumstances. This novel will inevitably invite comparisons with the classic The Catcher in the Rye, but unlike Holden Caulfield, Hou isn't given any second chances. With characteristic frankness and irony, Chang's teenagers bear witness to a new form of cultural and spiritual bankruptcy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346115760401,"sku":"CIN0231120974G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51465484075281,"sku":"GOR002661066","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231120974.jpg?v=1751164676"},{"product_id":"city-of-the-queen-book-shu-ching-shih-9780231134576","title":"City of the Queen","description":"From its beginnings as a pestilent port and colonial backwater, Hong Kong became the \"pearl\" of a declining British empire, and then ascended to its present status as a gleaming city of commerce. Throughout its history, Hong Kong has been steeped in drama, intrigue, and seismic social shifts. Shih Shu-ching, an acclaimed Taiwanese writer, sets her epic tale of one beautiful and determined woman's family amid this rich and colorful history, capturing in vivid, panoramic detail the unique tensions and atmosphere that characterize the city. Critically praised and long popular in the Chinese-speaking world, City of the Queen is now available for the first time in English.  After being kidnapped from her home in rural China, Huang, the novel's heroine, is brought to Hong Kong and sold into prostitution. Thanks to her shrewd, sometimes devious business dealings and unexpected twists of fate, she emerges from these cruel beginnings to become a wealthy landowner. City of the Queen follows the fortunes of Huang's family, including those of her devoutly Christian daughter-in-law, who tries to redeem the sins she believes Huang has committed; her grandson, who becomes the first Chinese judge on the Hong Kong Supreme Court; and her great-granddaughter, a quintessential Hong Kong young woman, who turns her back on family tradition to revel in the pleasures offered by the 1970s and 1980s metropolis.  The novel introduces a range of other Chinese and British characters, examining the complicated relationships between colonizer and colonized in a searing and perceptive portrayal of colonialism. There is Adam Smith, the British officer who struggles with the competing seductions of Huang's beauty and British respectability; Qu Yabing, Smith's servant, who despises anything Chinese, yet becomes Huang's lover after she is abandoned by Smith; Colonel White, the sadistic colonial police chief; and Auntie Eleven, a concubine who owns a pawnshop and teaches Huang the secrets of the trade.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347056202001,"sku":"CIN0231134576G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53558799532305,"sku":"GOR014960124","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231134576.jpg?v=1750813093"},{"product_id":"wintry-night-book-qiao-li-9780231122009","title":"Wintry Night","description":"An epic spanning more than half a century of Taiwan's history, this breathtaking historical novel traces the fortunes of the Pengs, a family of Hakka Chinese settlers, across three generations from the 1890s, just before Taiwan was ceded to Japan as a result of the Sino-Japanese war, through World War II. Li Qiao brilliantly re-creates the dramatic world of these pioneers-and the colonization of Taiwan itself-exploring their relationships with the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan and their struggle to establish their own ethnic and political identities.  This carefully researched work of fiction draws upon Li's own experiences and family history, as well as oral and written histories of the era. Originally published in Chinese as a trilogy, this newly translated edition is an abridgement for English-speaking readers and marks the work's first appearance in the English-speaking world. It was well-received in Taiwan as an honest-and influential-recreation of Taiwan's history before the relocation of the Republic of China from the mainland to Taiwan. Because Li's saga is so deeply imbued with the unique culture and complex history of Taiwan, an introduction explaining the cultural and historical background of the novel is included to help orient the reader to this amazingly rich cultural context. This informative introduction and the sweeping saga of the novel itself together provide an important view of Taiwan's little known colonial experience.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347059380497,"sku":"CIN0231122004G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231122004.jpg?v=1759917579"},{"product_id":"last-of-the-whampoa-breed-book-pang-yuan-chi-9780231130028","title":"The Last of the Whampoa Breed","description":"Whampoa Military Academy was China's first modern military institution. For decades the \"Spirit of Whampoa\" was invoked as the highest praise to all Chinese soldiers who guarded their nation heroically. But of all the battles these soldiers have fought, the most challenging one was the civil war that resulted in the \"great divide\" of China in the mid-twentieth century. In 1949 the Communists exiled a million soldiers and their families to compounds in Taiwan and cut off communication with mainland China for forty years. The Last of the Whampoa Breed tells the stories of the exiles written by their descendants, many of whom have become Taiwan's most important authors. The book is an important addition to the vastly underrepresented literature of Taiwan in translation and sheds light on the complex relationship between Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. Western readers will not at first recognize the experiences of these soldiers who were severed from a traditional past only to face unfulfilled promises and uncertain futures. Many of the exiles were doomed to live and die homeless and loveless. Yet these life stories reveal a magnanimous, natural dignity that has transcended prolonged mental suffering. \"I Wanted to Go to War\" describes the sadly ineffectual, even comic attempts to \"recapture the mainland.\" The old soldier in \"Tale of Two Strangers\" asks to have his ashes scattered over both the land of his dreams and the island that has sheltered him for forty years. Some of the stories recount efforts to make peace with life in Taiwan, as in \"Valley of Hesitation,\" and the second generation's struggles to find a place in the native island society as in \"The Vanishing Ball\" and \"In Remembrance of My Buddies from the Military Compound.\" Narrating the homeland remembered and the homeland in reality, the stories in this book affirm that \"we shall not let history be burned to mere ashes.\"","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347066294545,"sku":"CIN0231130023G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231130023.jpg?v=1751258421"},{"product_id":"hawk-of-the-mind-book-yang-mu-9780231184694","title":"Hawk of the Mind","description":"Yang Mu is a towering figure in modern Chinese poetry. His poetic voice is subtle and lyrical, and his work is rich with precise images and crystalline thoughts invoking temporality and remembrance. A bold innovator and superb craftsman, he elegantly combines cosmopolitan experimentation with poetic forms and an allusive reverence for classical Chinese poetry while remaining rooted in his native Taiwan and its colonial history.  Hawk of the Mind is a comprehensive collection of Yang Mu’s poetry that presents crucial works from the many stages of his long creative career, rendered into English by a team of distinguished translators. It conveys the complexity and beauty of Yang Mu’s work in a stately and lucid English poetic register that displays his ability to range from meditative to playful and colloquial to archaic. The volume includes an editor’s introduction and definitive commentary that offer insights into the poet’s major themes and motifs, explaining how he draws on deep engagement with Chinese and Western literary traditions, history, and art as well as mythology, philosophy, and music and a profound love for the natural world to create a nuanced and multifaceted artistic universe. It also contains translations of prefaces and afterwords written by Yang Mu for collections of his poetry. Hawk of the Mind demonstrates the breadth and depth of Yang Mu’s oeuvre, illustrating the distinctive style and affective power of a great poet.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347110760721,"sku":"CIN0231184697G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231184697.jpg?v=1751389084"},{"product_id":"frontier-taiwan-book-michelle-yeh-9780231118477","title":"Frontier Taiwan","description":"Taiwan has evolved dramatically from a little-known island to an internationally acclaimed economic miracle and thriving democracy. The history of modern Taiwanese poetry parallels and tells the story of this transformation from periphery to frontier. Containing translations of nearly 400 poems from 50 poets spanning the entire twentieth century, this anthology reveals Taiwan in a broad spectrum of themes, forms, and styles: from lyrical meditation to political satire, haiku to concrete poetry, surrealism to postmodernism. The in-depth introduction outlines the development of modern poetry in the unique historical and cultural context of Taiwan. 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Siwen, a virgin himself, dreads any bad P.R. from \"Saigon Rose\" (slang for a particularly virulent strain of v. d.) and so demands the finest conveniences and conditions for \"servicing the Yanks.\" \"Sanitation above all...Do you think U.S. dollars will float out of their pockets in crummy rooms like that?\" The Americans must not leave with a poor impression of Taiwan; not only Dong Siwen and the Big 4 but the entire nation would lose face. 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The first collection of Huang Fan's work to appear in English, this anthology includes Zero, a prize-winning dystopian novella echoing George Orwell's chilling 1984. Set in a postapocalyptic world, Zero features Xi De, a young man raised in an elite community who risks everything to challenge his society's charismatic leader and technocratic rule. Huang Fan's novella poignantly illustrates the quandary of an idealistic man trapped among conflicting claims to truth, unsure whether to think of himself as heroic or foolish in his ultimate choice of resistance and sacrifice.  This anthology also features three critically acclaimed short stories: \"Lai Suo,\" which established Huang Fan's reputation as a groundbreaking author; \"The Intelligent Man\"; and \"How to Measure the Width of a Ditch.\" In \"Lai Suo,\" a naive individual becomes the pawn of powerful men intent on political advancement. 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The Shan have been defeated, but the victory celebrations of the Huhui are quickly brought to an end. After deserting Sunlon City, the Shan regroup and return for one final and bitter attempt to destroy the weakened rebel forces. During their exile, the Shan turn their aggressions against the indigenous races of the Huhui planet, a colorful mix of peaceful tribes resembling serpents, eagles, and leopards. Forced into the war to save their remaining territory, the indigenous peoples join the Huhui in their continuing struggle against the Shan.  The third novel, Tale of a Feather, opens with images of chaos and devastation. The conflict with the Shan has left the city in flames, and refugees are fleeing in droves through the main gates. Taking advantage of the turmoil, a ruthless dictator assumes control of the weak interim government and begins a treacherous campaign to eliminate his adversaries. 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