{"product_id":"remains-of-life-9780231166010","title":"Remains of Life","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn October 27, 1930, during a sports meet at Musha Elementary School on an aboriginal reservation in the mountains of Taiwan, a bloody uprising occurred unlike anything Japan had experienced in its colonial history. Before noon, the Atayal tribe had slain one hundred and thirty-four Japanese in a headhunting ritual. The Japanese responded with a militia of three thousand, heavy artillery, airplanes, and internationally banned poisonous gas, bringing the tribe to the brink of genocide. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNearly seventy years later, Chen Guocheng, a writer known as Wu He, or \"Dancing Crane,\" investigated the Musha Incident to search for any survivors and their descendants. \u003ci\u003eRemains of Life\u003c\/i\u003e, a milestone of Chinese experimental literature, is a fictionalized account of the writer's experiences among the people who live their lives in the aftermath of this history. Written in a stream-of-consciousness style, it contains no paragraph breaks and only a handful of sentences. Shifting among observations about the people the author meets, philosophical musings, and fantastical leaps of imagination, \u003ci\u003eRemains of Life\u003c\/i\u003e is a powerful literary reckoning with one of the darkest chapters in Taiwan's colonial history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWu 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 \u003ci\u003eDigging for Bones\u003c\/i\u003e (1995), \u003ci\u003eThe Sea at Seventeen \u003c\/i\u003e(1997), \u003ci\u003eWu He Danshui\u003c\/i\u003e (2001), \u003ci\u003eGhost and Goblin\u003c\/i\u003e (2005), and \u003ci\u003eChaos and Confusion\u003c\/i\u003e (2007), and has won nearly every major national literary award upon its publication in Taiwan. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMichael 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\u003ci\u003e A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film\u003c\/i\u003e (2008), and the translator of several novels, including \u003ci\u003eWild Kids: Two Novels About Growing Up\u003c\/i\u003e (2000), \u003ci\u003eNanjing 1937: A Love Story\u003c\/i\u003e (2002), and, with Susan Chan Egan, \u003ci\u003eThe Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai\u003c\/i\u003e (2008), all from Columbia University Press.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50318575042834,"sku":"9780231166010","price":31.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_d158c3a8-1d5f-44b1-a474-421ea55eaaa5.jpg?v=1727558003","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/remains-of-life-9780231166010","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}