Heaven Does Not Block All Roads is an elucidating and well-written biography of Huang Chin-tao, a member of the resistance army Troop 27 and later dangwai activist. As such, Huang came to be known as Taiwan’s so-called “Eternal Warrior” before his passing in 2019 Read More
Kirsten Han’s The Singapore That I Recognise provides a glimpse of Singaporean civil society activism in recent years. The book stands out not only as a personal account of Han’s own journey as a journalist and activist, but also with regards to what it shows about Singapore today Read More
Among the Braves, by Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin, is a gripping, powerful narrative of the events surrounding the 2019 Hong Kong protests Read More
Dear Chrysanthemums, by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, is a well-crafted set of stories set during various points in modern Chinese history Read More
Andrew Beckershoff's Social Forces in the Re-Making of Cross-Strait Relations is a useful look at the backdrop of events that later led to the 2014 Sunflower Movement. Read More
Hsin-Hui Lin's Contactless Intimacy is a claustrophobic character study, a dazzling exercise in worldbuilding, and a chilling thought experiment: what would happen if artificial intelligence gained the power to dictate human intimacy? In a world where physical contact is prohibited, relationships are optimized by machines, and free will is exposed as fiction, what might become of individual agency? Read More
林新惠的《零觸碰親密》是一部深入角色直至引發幽閉恐懼的作品。小說建構的世界令人讚歎不已,同時也是令人不寒而慄的思想實驗:如果有一天人工智能得以支配人類彼此的親密關係,會發生什麼?在一個身體接觸被明令禁止、人際關係被機械優化、自由意志近乎虛無的世界,個人的能動性將會發生什麼變化? Read More
Agnes Chew's Eternal Summer of My Homeland, written about the author’s homeland of Singapore while living in Germany, is a capable collection of short stories. Consisting of eleven short stories, the collection is briskly paced given their length Read More
Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy: Sexual Disorientation in the Films of Tsai Ming-liang by Nicholas de Villiers is a strong entry in the English-language literature on one of Taiwan’s most distinguished contemporary filmmakers Read More
Jonathan Lerner's Lily Narcissus is an elegiac novel, reflecting on a period of history long gone Read More
劉紹華是一名醫療人類學學者,長年在中國與臺灣研究衛生管理。從2002年起,她在中國四川涼山以民族誌方式研究涼山彞族的愛滋、毒品與流動青年的現象,深入分析社會變遷與國家衛生政策的關係。劉紹華從她對愛滋病與麻風的研究而深知,疫病、污名歧視、人權以及政治的互相關聯。在2020年出版的書籍《疫病與社會的十個關鍵詞》裡,她從正在肆虐全球的COVID-19疫情切入,以多年積累的知識提醒讀者,這一波疫情所引發社會、人權及政治的困境與爭執,並非新穎之事,反而是歷史中反覆再現的問題。劉紹華舉各種例子描述在面對疫情的過程中,不可淡忘的歷史教訓。本書的特點在於,剖析國家所採取的、看似理所當然的政策,如「防疫大作戰」等口號標語或高舉前線醫療人員為「道德模範」,探討其未料的後果,以及其掩蓋社會基層問題的企圖。 Read More
Deliberative Democracy in Taiwan: A Deliberate Systems Perspective by Mei-Fang Fan is a useful look at contemporary democracy in the Taiwanese context. Read More