Ghost Town
A NEW YORK TIMES MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF FALL 2022
FROM THE BEST-SELLING AUTHOR & WINNER OF THE TAIWAN LITERATURE AWARD
Keith Chen, the second son of a traditional Taiwanese family of seven, runs away from the oppression of his village to Berlin in the hope of finding acceptance as a young gay man.
The novel begins a decade later, when Chen has just been released from prison for killing his boyfriend. He is about to return to his family's village, a poor and desolate place. With his parents gone, his sisters married, mad, or dead, there is nothing left for him there. As the story unfurls, we learn what tore this family apart and, more importantly, the truth behind the murder of Chen's boyfriend.
Told in a myriad of voices, both living and dead, and moving through time with deceptive ease, Ghost Town weaves a mesmerizing web of family secrets and countryside superstitions, the search for identity and clash of cultures.
★ "Multidimensional characters, a beautifully realized setting, and an apposite surprise ending... This book is excellent."--Booklist (Starred Review)
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
Kevin Chen began his artistic career as a cinema actor, starring in the Taiwanese and German films Ghosted, Kung Bao Huhn, and Global Player. Now based in Germany, he is a staff writer for Performing Arts Reviews magazine. He's published several novels, essays and short story collections, including Attitude, Flowers from Fingernails, Three Ways to Get Rid of Allergies and other titles.
Darryl Sterk has translated a dozen novels from Taiwan, including Lee Wei-Jing's The Mermaid's Tale, Sakinu Ahronglong's Hunter School, Chih-ying Lay's Home Sickness, Horace Ho's The Tree Fort on Carnation Lane, as well as Wu Ming-Yi's The Man With the Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle, which was longlisted for the Booker International Prize. He lives between Taipei and Hong Kong.
★ "Kevin Chen has done a masterful job of managing his material, creating multidimensional characters, a beautifully realized setting, and an apposite surprise ending. Meanwhile, Chen and his family's stories are uniformly interesting, and seamless in their portrayal of the characters' intersecting lives... this resulting book is excellent."--Booklist (Starred Review)
."Rich and complicated."--The News Lens
"Ghost Town is a masterpiece of twenty-first century Taiwanese 'native soil' literature."--United Daily News (Taiwan)
"Magical, fierce, pungent, and cruel."--BIOS Monthly
