Lo Yi-Chin: 遠方 (Faraway)

The latest addition to my website is Lo Yi-Chin‘s 遠方 (Faraway). Our hero, also called Lo Yi-Chin, is a Taiwanese novelist. His father left China in 1949, abandoning his family, and fled to Taiwan where he started a new family. He has since been back and has now gone on a tour when he has a stroke. Lo Yi-Chin and his mother fly to Jiujiang (a fuckhole of a town, our author describes it), in what he considers very much a third world country. Much of the book is devoted to his dealing with the Chinese system (bribes obligatory) and trying to fly his father back to Taipei, where he can be treated properly, though he ruminates on many topics including novels and novel-writing, the other patients and, of course, father-son relationships. It could have been boring but Lo Yi-Chin writes so well that we never lose interest.