Introduction Remains of Life Afterword Notes
In 1930, in the mountains of Taiwan, the Atayal tribe rose up against the Japanese colonial regime. The Japanese response brought the tribe to the brink of genocide. Wu He investigates the atrocity in this milestone of Chinese experimental literature. Shifting among observations about the people the author meets, philosophical musings, and fantastical leaps of imagination, Remains of Life is a powerful literary reckoning with one of the darkest chapters in Taiwan's colonial history.
Wu He is a native of Tainan, Taiwan, and came to prominence in 1974 with the publication of his award-winning short story, "Peony Autumn." He spent much of the 1980s and 1990s in seclusion before returning to the literary world with a string of powerful and challenging books, including Digging for Bones (1995), The Sea at Seventeen (1997), Wu He Danshui (2001), Ghost and Goblin (2005), and Chaos and Confusion (2007), and has won nearly every major national literary award upon its publication in Taiwan. Michael Berry is professor of modern Chinese literature and film at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of, among others, Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (2005) and A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008), and the translator of several novels, including Wild Kids: Two Novels About Growing Up (2000), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (2002), and, with Susan Chan Egan, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai (2008), all from Columbia University Press.
Remains of Life is a novel of the first order. Welding experimental language and penetrating insights into history and memory, it transcends commonly used categories such as literary movements and schools. Remains of Life is not only a landmark in modern Chinese literature but truly an epochal accomplishment. -- Michelle Yeh, University of California, Davis After spending ten years living in seclusion, Wu He began publishing a series of short stories, novellas, and novels that culminated in the publication of Remains of Life. The novel stands as a singular statement, at once profound and powerful, that could only come from the brilliant literary imagination of Wu He. -- Chu T'ien-wen, author of Notes of a Desolate Man Wu He is one of the most innovative Chinese-language writers today, and Michael Berry is one of the best translators of Chinese. I cannot think of a modern or contemporary work of literature in the Chinese language that is comparable to Remains of Life. It deserves a place alongside great literary works dealing with genocide such as Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald. -- Lingchei Letty Chen, Washington University in St. Louis A brilliant but immensely challenging work, of great interest to students of contemporary Asian fiction-and of the literature of atrocity and remembrance as well. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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