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The Kite Family
A patient escapes from an asylum to spend his life as the perfect mannequin in a department store display; when living alone is outlawed, a woman who resides quietly with her cat is assigned by bureaucrats to a role in an artificially created “family”; a luckless man transforms himself into a chair so people can, literally, sit on him. These are just a few of the inhabitants of Hon Lai-chu’s stories, where surreal charac-ters struggle to carve out space for freedom and individuality in an absurd world. The Chinese version of The Kite Family won the New Writer’s Novella first prize from Taiwan’s Unitas Literary Association, was named one of 2008’s Books of the Year by Taiwan’s C...
Mending Bodies
In dystopian Hong Kong, a new government program incentivizes physical conjoinment between individuals through a painful and disruptive surgery, promising personal fulfillment and a reduced cost of living. Hon Lai Chu's unnamed narrator is broke and knee-deep in her dissertation on the subject, critical but increasingly unmoored by the implications--and the possibilities. Surely it is better for society to give up your autonomy if it means taking fewer resources, as the conjoined do, right? Hon Lai Chu, one of the foremost writers working in Hong Kong today, sets her characters loose in a macabre reality animated by sketchy institutions and characters with elusive motivations. Politically and socially allegorical, Mending Bodies, translated by Jacqueline Leung, challenges our safe understandings of people, bodies, and governments.
Snow and Shadow
Dorothy Tse's stories sometimes start in a vein of innocent realism, but she invariably brings us up short with an abrupt twist: dreamscapes descend and the pages become populated with ever weirder characters. Not only do strange things happen, they are juxtaposed in ways that confound all logical expectations. This collection of 13 short stories is not for the faint-hearted -- violent and sensual elements abound and limbs, even heads, are lopped off with alarming regularity. Yet scenes are sometimes so outrageous that they make us laugh, and Dorothy's bold thematic and narrative experiments yield results that are alternately beguiling and deeply disturbing.
Lake Like a Mirror
By an author described by critics as 'the most accomplished Malaysian writer, full stop'. Lake Like a Mirror is a scintillating exploration of the lives of women buffeted by powers beyond their control. Squeezing themselves between the gaps of rabid urbanisation, patriarchal structures and a theocratic government, these women find their lives twisted in disturbing ways. In precise and disquieting prose, Ho Sok Fong draws her readers into a richly atmospheric world of naked sleepwalkers in a rehabilitation centre for wayward Muslims, mysterious wooden boxes, gossip in unlicensed hairdressers, hotels with amnesiac guests, and poetry classes with accidentally charged politics - a world that is peopled with the ghosts of unsaid words, unmanaged desires and uncertain statuses, surreal and utterly true.
Dao Companion to ZHU Xi’s Philosophy
Zhu Xi (1130-1200) has been commonly and justifiably recognized as the most influential philosopher of Neo-Confucianism, a revival of classical Confucianism in face of the challenges coming from Daoism and, more importantly, Buddhism. His place in the Confucian tradition is often and also very plausibly compared to that of Thomas Aquinas, slightly later, in the Christian tradition. This book presents the most comprehensive and updated study of this great philosopher. It situates Zhu Xi’s philosophy in the historical context of not only Confucian philosophy but also Chinese philosophy as a whole. Topics covered within Zhu Xi’s thought are metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, hermeneutics, philosophy of religion, moral psychology, and moral education. This text shows both how Zhu Xi responded to earlier thinkers and how his thoughts resonate in contemporary philosophy, particularly in the analytic tradition. This companion will appeal to students, researchers and educators in the field.
Once A Hero
In Once A Hero, his latest collection of essays, Lam describes the decline of Hong Kong cinema since 1997 and gives an eyewitness account of its attempt to reinvent itself. He examines successes and failures of its famous auteurs; spotlights talented newcomers; and, with the future of Hong Kong cinema now bound up with the mainland, discusses the works of major Chinese filmmakers.
A Concise History of Hong Kong
When the British occupied the tiny island of Hong Kong during the First Opium War, the Chinese empire was well into its decline, while Great Britain was already in the second decade of its legendary "Imperial Century." From this collision of empires arose a city that continues to intrigue observers. Melding Chinese and Western influences, Hong Kong has long defied easy categorization. John M. Carroll's engrossing and accessible narrative explores the remarkable history of Hong Kong from the early 1800s through the post-1997 handover, when this former colony became a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. The book explores Hong Kong as a place with a unique identity, yet also a crossroads where Chinese history, British colonial history, and world history intersect. Carroll concludes by exploring the legacies of colonial rule, the consequences of Hong Kong's reintegration with China, and significant developments and challenges since 1997.
Sensing the Sinophone
"This book assesses the dynamics of human senses and environment, memory and narrativity, through the prism of the ever-evolving urban scape in the Chinese and Sinophone world. The study regards the "city" as an architectural sphere, a site of sociality, a domain of affect, and most suggestively, a narrative construct. With a lineup of works drawn from contemporary Chinese and Sinophone communities, this study identifies indigenous and global contestations, introduces multiple themes, styles, and discourses, and ponders the consequences of narrative fiction as a unique manifestation through which the urban subject encounters and configures the world. Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei are chosen as the specific sites in which such encounters and configurations take shape. This book is an important resource for all interested in narratology, urban studies, environmental studies, affect studies, Asian studies, and comparative literature in both Sinophone and global contexts"--
The Membranes
It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality. First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculati...
The Culture of Love in China and Europe
In The Culture of Love in China and Europe Paolo Santangelo and Gábor Boros offer a survey of the cults of love developed in the history of ideas and literary production in China and Europe between the 12th and early 19th century. They describe parallel evolutions within the two cultures, and how innovatively these independent civilisations developed their own categories and myths to explain, exalt but also control the emotions of love and their behavioural expressions. The analyses contain rich materials for comparison, point out the universal and specific elements in each culture, and hint at differences and resemblances, without ignoring the peculiar beauty and attractive force of the texts cultivating love.
