Foreword, by Michael Berry
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Principal Characters
1. A Pyrrhic Victory
2. The Tragedy That Befell the Rover
3. Orphans of Mixed Blood
4. Identity Revealed
5. Repulse of the Foreign Forces
6. Serenity Lost and Found
7. Troops Marching
8. Puppet Mountains
9. Praying to Guanyin
10. Epilogue
Maps and Illustrations
Glossary
Notes
Yao-Chang Chen is professor emeritus of medicine at National Taiwan
University and is a leading specialist in blood cell diseases. He
began writing novels in his sixties, becoming a prolific and
acclaimed author of historical fiction.
Pao-fang Hsu has translated works including Chung Wen-yin’s Decayed
Land and The Anthology of Taiwan Indigenous Literature.
Ian Maxwell graduated from Lancaster University; he lives and works
in Taipei.
Tung-jung Chen is a retired professor of English who taught
American literature at Taiwanese universities.
This well-wrought book transports us to a complicated yet majestic
period in Taiwan’s history. A significant novel, steeped in this
unique place while echoing around the world.
*Lu Ping, author of Love and Revolution: A Novel About Song
Qingling and Sun Yat-sen*
Was Formosa a place too treacherous to visit? The author of Puppet
Flower boldly takes up this question and tries to answer it from
various perspectives, most notably that of the island's indigenous
peoples. Strongly recommended!
*Li Ang, author of The Lost Garden: A Novel*
This engaging historical novel shows how a small event on a remote
island can make history.
*Ping-hui Liao, Chuan Lyu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies,
University of California, San Diego*
In the novel Puppet Flower, Chen explores the complex intersection
of international politics and cross-cultural exchange in
mid-nineteenth century Taiwan. By imagining the contributions of a
mixed-race sibling pair, Chen brings to life the actions and
complex societies of indigenous and plains peoples at the threshold
of new forms of colonialism.
*Margaret Mih Tillman, author of Raising China's
Revolutionaries: Modernizing Childhood for Cosmopolitan
Nationalists and Liberated Comrades, 1920s-1950s*
[A] nuanced depiction of a formative Formosa.
*Taipei Times*
Chen’s novel successfully delivers an alternative history of Taiwan
in which all the involved subjectivities, especially those that
have traditionally been neglected by official narratives, are given
a voice.
*Asian Review of Books*
The whole novel is fascinating in that it mixes in a fairly messy
but also fairly conventional personal story with the complex
manoeuvrings of the various powers seeking control of Taiwan.
*The Modern Novel*
[A] unique reimagining of an obscure event in 'a turning point'
year in Taiwanese history. Told from a multitude of perspectives,
particularly of indigenous peoples, Chen’s story does not sacrifice
history and complicated colonial relations for cute dramatic
contrivances. This is historical fiction with an emphasis on the
former.
*The Historical Novels Review*
Chen’s fiction is important in that it not only tells a forgotten
history but also gives voice to the complexity of Taiwanese
identity and to those who are most forgotten: the many indigenous
people who predate the colonial influences of the Han Chinese,
Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, and Americans.
*World Literature Today*
Puppet Flower is an absorbing tour through the multicultural
hodgepodge that was Formosa in the mid-19th century
*Cha: An Asian Literary Journal*
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