The latest addition to my website is Guixing Zhang‘s 傀儡花 (Elephant Herd). Zhang is a Malaysian born Chinese speaker who moved to Taiwan and was naturalised Taiwanese. However his novels are set primarily in Sarawak, Malaysia. This one is about Shicai who is called the boy whom we meet when young and also when older. When young we learn of the colourful life in the rain forest – elephants, crocodiles, communist guerrillas and when he is older he makes an epic trip up river with a friend looking for his uncle, Yu Jiatong, who leads a guerrilla group, to which Shicai’s brothers belonged and for which they were killed fighting the Malaysian army, in theory to persuade him to surrender. Yu Jiatong is most interested in tracking down a legendary herd of elephants which uncle and nephew endeavour to do. This book has been described as weird (it is, in a good way) and uses magic realism, a huge amount of local colour, very odd characters, lots of animals and a convoluted but fascinating plot to give us a first-class novel.