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While chasing business opportunities in China, Min-Hui’s husband disappears without a trace, forcing her to uproot her quiet life as a writer in Taiwan and travel to Beijing, where the chaos of the city leaves her reeling. Does the Chinese government truly have her best interests at heart, and how hard are the authorities looking for her missing husband? Marooned in the ancient capital, Min-Hui encounters the enigmatic Shangjun, a self-proclaimed human rights activist who seeks refuge in her hotel room. As their relationship blooms, Min-Hui allows him to read her novel in progress: a young Qing emperor confined within the Forbidden City becomes fascinated by pirate merchant Zheng Zhilong’s tales of the Taiwanese seas. All the while, Min-Hui contemplates the discord in the marriage she is desperate to save. Exploring the universal longing for freedom with her signature multi-layered narrative, Ping Lu interweaves Min-Hui’s search for her husband and her Beijing love affair with the historical backstory of her novel and unsent letters from her vanished husband. To the East of the East offers a profound meditation on liberation, destiny and the contingencies of national histories by one of Taiwan’s most sophisticated contemporary voices.
“Not only does Ping Lu’s novel offer a captivating story, she also uses glimpses of omniscient narration to reveal the razor-sharp, penetrating perspective of the cultural critic.”— Shih Ju-Fang, playwright
“Ping Lu’s acuity dispels the questioning of dialecticism and the unrestrained attacks of criticism, piercing through numerous hypocricies and falsehoods, stabbing the reader into pain and wakefulness.” —Professor Fan Ming-Ju, Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature, National Chengchi University
“Reading a Ping Lu novel brings the same pleasure as solving a riddle.” —Professor Hao Yu-Hsiang, National Taipei University of Education
“Ping Lu captures the most contradictory, yet most understandable, aspects of humanity.” —Chen Bo-Ching, author of Mr. Adult
Praise for Love and Revolution
"Ping Lu succeeds in showing the ordinary and sometimes repugnant details of Qingling's life." —Perry Link, New York Review of Books
Jeremy Tiang won the Singapore Literature Prize for his novel State of Emergency, and was shortlisted for the same prize for his short story collection It Never Rains on National Day (forthcoming from World Editions). He has translated over thirty books from Chinese, including Zhang Yueran's Cocoon for World Editions, which won the Singapore Literature Prize. He also writes and translates plays—most recently Salesman之死, which was staged at New York’s Connelly Theater, and received an Obie Award. Originally from Singapore, he now lives in New York City.