Novel
Family Catastrophe
家變
Wang Wen-hsing · 1973
Synopsis
One afternoon, a retired old man leaves the house without a word, leaving behind his wife and his son. The son, Fan Ye, sets out to look for him and places notices in the newspapers. In counterpoint to this search, a hundred and fifty-seven chapters, often very short, go back to his early childhood and retrace his relationship with his parents: the child who idolised his father comes to despise parents he judges weak, quarrelsome and lying, and the novel puts filial piety on trial.
Context
The novel first appeared in a review, the monthly Chung-wai Literary, from September 1972 to February 1973, then in volume form in Taipei in 1973, after seven years of writing. Its publication caused a scandal: critics judged it socially irresponsible, immoral and unreasonable in style. It is now regarded as a summit of Taiwanese modernism, because of its work on language, made of neologisms, rare characters and typographical devices; in his preface of 1978, the author writes that words are everything in the work.
Who it is for
For reading the novel that shook up Taiwanese prose of the seventies, translated into French by Actes Sud.
Prizes and reception
The weekly Asiaweek included it among the hundred best novels in the Chinese language of the twentieth century.
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