Notes of a Desolate Man Hardcover - 1999
by T'Ien-Wen Chu; Howard Goldblatt (Translator); Sylvia Lin (Translator)
Winner of the coveted "China Times" Novel Prize, "Notes of a Desolate Man" presents the story of a gay man reflecting on his life, loves, and intellectual influences.
From the jacket flap
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 Lichun 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.Details
- Title Notes of a Desolate Man
- Author T'Ien-Wen Chu; Howard Goldblatt (Translator); Sylvia Lin (Translator)
- Binding Hardcover
- Edition first edition
- Pages 184
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Columbia University Press, New York
- Date 1999-06
- ISBN 9780231116084 / 023111608X
- Weight 0.8 lbs (0.36 kg)
- Dimensions 9.5 x 5.74 x 0.94 in (24.13 x 14.58 x 2.39 cm)
-
Themes
- Cultural Region: Asian - General
- Sex & Gender: Gay
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 98-32400
- Dewey Decimal Code FIC
Media reviews
Citations
- Booklist, 06/01/2000, Page 1808
- Ingram Advance, 06/01/1999, Page 102
- Kirkus Reviews, 06/01/1999, Page 832
- New York Times, 02/04/2001, Page 32
- Publishers Weekly, 05/24/1999, Page 66
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