Ghost Town - by Kevin Chen (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Keith Chen, the second son of a traditional Taiwanese family of seven, runs away from the oppression of his village to Berlin in the hope of finding acceptance as a young gay man. The novel begins a decade later, when Chen has just been released from prison for killing his boyfriend. He is about to return to his family's village, a poor and desolate place. With his parents gone, his sisters married, mad, or dead, there is nothing left for him there. As the story unfurls, we learn what tore this family apart and, more importantly, the truth behind the murder of Chen's boyfriend."--Publisher's marketing.

Book Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF FALL 2022

FROM THE BEST-SELLING AUTHOR & WINNER OF THE TAIWAN LITERATURE AWARD

Keith Chen, the second son of a traditional Taiwanese family of seven, runs away from the oppression of his village to Berlin in the hope of finding acceptance as a young gay man.

The novel begins a decade later, when Chen has just been released from prison for killing his boyfriend. He is about to return to his family's village, a poor and desolate place. With his parents gone, his sisters married, mad, or dead, there is nothing left for him there. As the story unfurls, we learn what tore this family apart and, more importantly, the truth behind the murder of Chen's boyfriend.

Told in a myriad of voices, both living and dead, and moving through time with deceptive ease, Ghost Town weaves a mesmerizing web of family secrets and countryside superstitions, the search for identity and clash of cultures.

★ "Multidimensional characters, a beautifully realized setting, and an apposite surprise ending... This book is excellent."--Booklist (Starred Review)

Review Quotes

"Intense and operatic... Ghost Town is reminiscent of the dreamlike narratives of Can Xue and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and will require readers to hold on tight to their sense of reality as the prose blurs lines between the living and the dead, the past and the present, and finally, the guilty and the innocent."--Leland Cheuk, NPR

★ "Kevin Chen has done a masterful job of managing his material, creating multidimensional characters, a beautifully realized setting, and an apposite surprise ending. Meanwhile, Chen and his family's stories are uniformly interesting, and seamless in their portrayal of the characters' intersecting lives... this resulting book is excellent."--Booklist (Starred Review)

★ "At once vibrant and tartly observant, Chen's tour de force reveals how we all hold onto the ghosts of the past... A highly recommended story of past, identity, and family."--Library Journal (Starred Review)

"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...life gets messy, and Chen is an author who can handle it."--Peter C. Baker, The New York Times Book Review

"This slow burn of a multigenerational family saga, told from multiple perspectives and going back and forth through time, unfolds delicately while pulling readers ever deeper into its web... It's a hypnotic and unforgettable read."--Buzzfeed, A Best Book of October

"A cinematic, sprawling family epic unfurls with exceptionally crafted characters--living, dead and in between."--Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness

"Dark and eerie... A rich and layered reading experience... 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."--BookPage

"Chen knows how to engage and tease his readers. His narratives are riddled with mysteries that exude magic, absurdity, suspense, cruelty, and shame, constantly whetting our curiosity until all the strands of the plot finally come together...Canadian translator Darryl Sterk...has preserved the authentically Taiwanese flavor of Chen's text, forging a literary language full of pleasant surprises."--New Southbound Policy Portal

"Kevin Chen gives voice to the whole family, living members as well as dead, dropping hints at surprising skeletons in the closet as he slowly, mesmerizingly reveals the family's secrets."--The A.V. Club, A Best Book of October 2022

"An impressive, sweeping tale centered around a large, traditional Taiwanese family."--CrimeReads, A Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2022

"A stunning novel about a small town in the Taiwan countryside and a family haunted by their own ghosts."--Buzz Magazine (UK)

"Rich and complicated."--The News Lens

"Ghost Town is a masterpiece of twenty-first century Taiwanese 'native soil' literature."--United Daily News (Taiwan)

"Magical, fierce, pungent, and cruel."--BIOS Monthly

"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. The characters, whether deceased or not, seem truly alive. The sadness comes, perhaps, from the living seeming most alive in their past, the dead seeming most alive in their present."--Litro Magazine