Wang Wen-hsing caused a sensation in Taiwan in 1972 with publication of Family Catastrophe, his first full-length novel. Many critics were outraged, called it socially irresponsible, morally corrupt, and stylistically irrational, but the novel weathered its controversial reception to become what is now widely regarded as a masterpiece in modern Chinese fiction and the benchmark of Taiwan?s Modernist movement. Often described as Joycean, Family Catastrophe is significant for its stylistic and linguistic experimentation as well as for its disturbing and universal themes. It appears now in English for the first time.
Written as the ludicrous and disturbing ramblings of an errant, pseudo-intellectual urbanite secluding himself from the underworld in an impoverished coastal village of Taiwan in the early 1960s, this
Written as the ludicrous and disturbing ramblings of an errant, pseudo-intellectual urbanite secluding himself from the underworld in an impoverished coastal village of Taiwan in the early 1960s, this
This volume consists of translations of twenty-four fictional works and five essays by Wang Wen-Hsing, plus a dedicated author's preface. Wang is one of the most celebrated modernist writers in Taiwan
