The English version of Taiwanese author Kevin Chen (陳思宏)’s best-selling novel, Ghost Town (鬼地方), was published by Europa Editions this August in the UK and on October 25 in the US. The novel has attracted significant global attention since then, including a positive review by The New York Times and selection by Library Journal in the category of Best of World Literature 2022.
Book Reviews of Ghost Town:
• The New York Times“ Kevin Chen’s “Ghost Town” is the literary equivalent of a suitcase jammed full to the point of bursting. Characters, memories, regrets, choices, consequences, secrets, history, politics, real estate, sex: They’re all pressed together close, like unwashed clothes after a long trip. Open the case up even a little bit and the dirty laundry starts spilling out.”
• NPR“The Chen family's collective longing to reunite in the face of constant tragedy fuels an exhilarating and often quite moving reading experience. Ghost Town is simply tough to put down and you'll be thinking about the Chens long after you've left Yongjing.”
• BUZZ“Ghost Town is a stunning novel about a small town in the Taiwan countryside and a family haunted by their own ghosts.”
“Chen’s characters are vibrant and quirky, and his writing style is consistently precise and sharp.”
• Booklist(starred review)：
“Author Kevin Chen has done a masterful job of managing his material, creating multidimensional characters, a beautifully realized setting, and an apposite surprise ending.”
• Library Journal(starred review)：
“At once vibrant and tartly observant, Chen’s tour de force—a Taiwan Literature Award winner—reveals how we all hold onto the ghosts of the past.”
“A highly recommended story of past, identity, and family.”
Best of World Literature 2022Best Covers from Best Books• Shelf Awareness“Kevin Chen's Ghost Town is certainly cinematic, populated with unforgettable characters--living, dead and in between.”
• The Irish Times“Each main character gets many opportunities to tell stories in a loose, this-reminds-me-of-that fashion—with important elements emerging in an incidental fashion—even when, as is quite often the case, they are detailing incidents of cruelty, especially from parents. The manifold ways in which their upbringing and natures combine to form their adult selves is another intricately formed element of an uncompromising, unsentimental, slyly humorous novel.”
• Bookpage.com“Winner of both the Taiwan Literature Award and the Golden Tripod Award (one of the highest honors in Taiwanese publishing), Ghost Town is full of gauzy prose and dark imagery. Darryl Sterk’s translation has a dreamlike quality, and it’s clear how much care he took to render the nuances of the original Taiwanese into English. This isn’t an easy read, but like a ghost, it lingers.”
• Litro Magazine“Despite the heavy subject matter, the book is never maudlin. In fact, true to paradoxical form, it manages to be light and heavy at the same time…So many novels are described as ‘haunting,’ but Ghost Town actually creates that contradictory eeriness within the reader.”
• Publishers Weekly“A haunting drama of a Taiwanese family’s efforts to rise out of poverty.”