Chu T'ien-hsin
Translated by Howard Goldblatt

Citronella, Chinese hibiscus, and other smells and sensations evoke a string of overlapping memories and recollections for the narrators of Chu T'ien-hsin's The Old Capital. Strolling through modern Taipei, these characters share an aching nostalgia for a time long past. Yet their memories also suggest a deeper anxiety over the legacy of Japanese colonialism and American imperialism. 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. The book opens with the question, "Is it possible none of your memories count?" and follows with a deep exploration of the reliability of remembrances and the thin line that separates fact from fantasy. World-renowned translator Howard Goldblatt captures the novel's casual, intimate feel while also respecting its multiple layers of meaning.

Zhang Guixing
Translated by Valerie Jaffee

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.

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.

City of the Queen
A Novel of Colonial Hong Kong

Shih Shu-Ching; Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin

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.

Indigenous Writers of Taiwan
An Anthology of Stories, Essays, and Poems

Edited by John Balcom and Yingtsih Balcom; translated with an introduction by John Balcom

Few people beyond the shores of Taiwan are aware that it is home to a population of indigenous peoples who for more than fifteen thousand years have lived on the island. Over the years, through the Chinese imperial period, the Japanese occupation, and for most of the twentieth century, the indigenous peoples of Taiwan were marginalized and deprived of rights. However, with the lifting of martial law in 1987, new government policies regarding ethnic groups, and growing interest in Taiwan's aboriginal peoples, indigenous writing began to blossom. With its intense and lyrical explorations of a fading culture, indigenous writing has become an important topic of discussion in Taiwanese literary circles.

Notes of a Desolate Man

Chu Tien-wen
Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin

Awarded the China Times Prize in 1994; Best Book: Los Angeles Times Book Review; Notable Book: New York Times Book Review; Best Fiction of the Year, Los Angeles Times Book Review

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 i s among the most important recent novels in Taiwan.

Orphan of Asia

Zhouliu Wu
with the assitance of Qiao Li and Translated by Ioannis Mentzas

Born in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, raised in the scholarly traditions of ancient China by his grandfather, and forced into the Japanese educational system, Hu Taiming, the protagonist of Orphan of Asia, is ultimately estranged from all three cultures. Wu's autobiographical novel, completed in 1945, is widely regarded as a classic of modern Taiwanese literature. Translated into English for the first time, Orphan of Asia offers a powerful depiction of the political, cultural, and psychological impact of colonialism.

Rose, Rose, I Love You
A Novel

Wang Chen-ho
Translated by Howard Goldblatt

In this lively translation of Wang Chen-ho's ribald satire, a Taiwanese village loses all perspective---and common sense---at the prospect of fleecing a shipload of lusty and lonely American soldiers. A rotund, excitable high school English teacher receives word that 300 GIs are coming from Vietnam for a weekend of R and R. He persuades the owners of the Big 4 brothels that they will all take in more U.S. dollars if the pleasure girls can speak a little English; his plan is to train fifty specially selected prostitutes in a "Crash Course for Bar Girls."

The City Trilogy
Five Jade Disks, Defenders of the Dragon City, and Tale of a Feather

Chang Hsi-kuo
Translated by John Balcom

Taiwan's most innovative science fiction writer presents three tales of intrigue, espionage, betrayal, political strife, time travel, and Chinese history and mysticism. After thousands of years of civil unrest and countless wars, the weary Huhui people of Sunlon City have once again succumbed to a ruthless and overpowering enemy. In Five Jade Disks, the first book in the trilogy, the imperialistic Shan have enslaved the inhabitants of Sunlon City and imposed a harsh martial order. As the Shan fight to retain control of the restless Huhui natives, an unstable rebel alliance prepares to win back its homeland. Amidst the confusion of revolt, Miss Qi, a determined young girl, emerges as an unlikely leader. With the help of her friends and the loyal Green Snake Brotherhood, Miss Qi discovers that an ancient cult and its insidious and unusually powerful leader may hold the key to the rebels' victory---or may yet be the cause of their undoing. As she rushes to put the pieces together, the rebels, divided by internal factions, strive to band together in a heroic attempt to overthrow the Shan.

The Last of the Whampoa Breed

Edited by Pang-yuan Chi and David Der-wei Wang

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.

The Taste of Apples

Huang Chun-ming
Translated by Howard Goldblatt

Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2001

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.

Three-Legged Horse

Cheng Ch'ing-wen

Winner of the 1999 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize

Here are twelve moving short stories about Taiwan and its people by one of the island's most popular writers, Cheng Ch'ing-wen. Focusing primarily on village life and the effects of modernization on Taiwan in the postwar years, Cheng is one of the most respected of the island's "nativist" writers, yet this is his first book to be translated into English. This anthology represents the best of his fictional efforts across a forty-year span and encompasses his major themes: the tensions between men and women, parents and children, city and village, tradition and modernity. Taken individually, each story presents a moving portrait of paralysis, frustration, or self-realization. Together, they weave a complex tapestry of life in a rapidly changing country.

Wild Kids

Two Novels About Growing Up
Chang Ta-chun
Translated by Michael Berry

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.

Wintry Night

Li Qiao
Translated by Taotao Liu and John Balcom

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.

Retribution
The Jiling Chronicles

Yung-p'ing Li
Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin

Retribution opens with the raucous festivities surrounding the annual procession to honor the Bodhisattva Guanyin. Changsheng, the young wife of the local coffin maker Liu Laoshi, is raped while making an offering to Guanyin in the hope of increasing her chances of bearing a son. Changsheng hangs herself following the encounter, and Liu Laoshi exacts bloody vengeance on the rapist’s own wife and favorite prostitute. This act of sexual violence and its retribution provide the narrative pivot around which is woven a web of interconnecting stories, whose characters and events provide divergent perspectives on the rape and its after math. The result is an unforgettable exploration of the intersections of sexual desire, sadism, folk belief, and the inexorable cycles of karmic retribution.