Notes of a Crocodile
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Description
The English-language premiere of Qiu Miaojin's coming-of-age novel about queer teenagers in Taiwan, a cult classic in China and winner of the 1995 China Times Literature Award.
An NYRB Classics Original
Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan’s most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure.
Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend.
Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.
Book Information
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The book is called a Lesbian classic and when the reader keeps in mind the time and place the book was written, then you’ll realize that it was and still is revolutionary. I really liked how the author divided the novel in two major parts: The main part is a regular coming of age novel with queer couples and the whole narration is done in a way that shows that queer couples are just like any other couples. The other parts are the notes of a crocodile and in those the author addresses the social stigmas LGBT people have to deal with. At times I thought the narration was too introverted and the dialogues lame, but I still thinks it’s worth reading and recommending.
Description
The English-language premiere of Qiu Miaojin's coming-of-age novel about queer teenagers in Taiwan, a cult classic in China and winner of the 1995 China Times Literature Award.
An NYRB Classics Original
Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan’s most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure.
Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend.
Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.
Book Information
Posts
The book is called a Lesbian classic and when the reader keeps in mind the time and place the book was written, then you’ll realize that it was and still is revolutionary. I really liked how the author divided the novel in two major parts: The main part is a regular coming of age novel with queer couples and the whole narration is done in a way that shows that queer couples are just like any other couples. The other parts are the notes of a crocodile and in those the author addresses the social stigmas LGBT people have to deal with. At times I thought the narration was too introverted and the dialogues lame, but I still thinks it’s worth reading and recommending.