Taipei People

Welcome to Taipei, Taiwan. The Chinese Civil War is now long over, but its shadow still haunts the city's lost souls. A masterwork of Chinese short fiction - now published in the UK for the very first time - Taipei People follows the lives and losses of those who fled to Taipei after the 1949 Communist takeover of China. Threaded through with yearning and nostaglia, brimming with lost loves and half-forgotten faces, with dark pasts and darker presents, this collection of fourteen tales is an ode to a city of exiles. These are stories for anyone who has ever left home, for anyone who has had to say goodbye, and for all those who were not able to. 'A master of portraiture' Henry Miller 'The highest achievement in the contemporary Chinese story' Patrick Hanan

Pai Hsien-Yung is an internationally acclaimed author and the founder of Modern Literature magazine. He is generally considered among the greatest living stylists of Chinese fiction and prose. His publications include the collections of short stories Lonely Seventeen, Taipei People, and The New Yorker; the collection of prose writing Suddenly the Past; and the novel Crystal Boys. Pai became a professor of Chinese literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1965, and retired in 1994. In recent years he has devoted his energy to the promotion of Chinese Kun opera to the world. He is the general producer and artistic director of the opera Peony Pavilion, which has toured China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the U.S.