The first comprehensive study in English of the cultural and literary dynamics of Taiwan from 1945, when Taiwan was returned to China after half-a-century of Japanese colonial rule, to date.

Preface / David Der-wei Wang vii
Introduction / Carlos Rojas 1
Part One: The Limits of Taiwan Literature
1. Representing Taiwan: Shifting Geopolitical Frameworks / Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang 17
2. Postmodern or Postcolonial? An Inquiry into Postwar Taiwanese Literary History / Fangming Chen 26
3. On the Concept of Taiwan Literature / Xiaobing Tang 51
Part Two: Cultural Politics
4. The Importance of Being Perverse: China and Taiwan, 1931–1937 / Joyce C. H. Liu 93
5. “On Our Destitute Dinner Table”: Modern Poetry Quarterly in the 1950s / Michelle Yeh 113
6. The Literary Development of Zhong Lihe and Postcolonial Discourse in Taiwan / Fenghuang Ying 140
7. Wang Wenxing’s Backed against the Sea, Parts I and II: The Meaning of Modernism in Taiwan’s Contemporary Literature / Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang 156
Part Three: History, Truth, and Textual Artifice
8. The Monster That Is History: Jiang Gui’s A Tale of Modern Monsters / David Der-wei Wang 181
9. Taiwanese Identity and the Crisis of Memory: Post-Chiang Mystery / Yomi Braester 213
10. Doubled Configuration: Reading Su Weizhen’s Theatricality / Gang Gary Xu 233
11. Techniques behind Lies and the Artistry of Truth: Writing about the Writings of Zhang Dachun / Kim-chu Ng 253
Part Four: Spectral Topographies and Circuits of Desire
12. Travel in Early-Twentieth-Century Asia: On Wu Zhuoliu’s “Nanking Journals” and His Notion of Taiwan’s Alternative Modernity / Ping-hui Liao 285
13. Mapping Identity in a Postcolonial City: Intertextuality and Cultural Hybridity in Zhu Tianxin’s Ancient Capital / Lingchei Letty Chen 301
14. Li Yongping and Spectral Cartography / Carlos Rojas 324
15. History, Exchange, and the Object Voice: Reading Li Ang’s The Strange Garden and All Sticks Are Welcome in the Censer of Beigang / Chaoyang Liao 348
16. Reenchanting the Image in Global Culture: Reification and Nostalgia in Zhu Tianwen’s Fiction / Ban Wang 370
Appendix: Chinese Characters for Authors’ Names and Titles of Works 389
Contributors 395
Index 397

David Der-wei Wang is Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China.

Carlos Rojas is Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Film at the University of Florida.