The Hell Screens
Books / Hardcover
Books › Fiction › Thrillers › General
ISBN: 156858167X / Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows, November 2000
In the hope of unmasking both a fugitive criminal and the dark spiritual forces seizing control of the city, a Chinese-American visitor to Taipei searches the city's bookstores for stories about ghosts but soon begins to see real spirits in the fetid, steamy streets. A first novel.
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A Chinese American rummages through Taipei, collecting accounts of ghosts and spirits in used-book stalls and market bins. He attempts to study the suicides and murders that abound in myths as well as newspapers, whose front pages scream about a rapist-killer. Cheng-Ming is an outsider trying to simultaneously uncover the fugitive criminal and the otherworld of spirits insinuating itself into the corrupted labyrinth of the city.His contact lens deteriorates in the fetid island atmosphere, and a fortune-telling apparition dips it in her tea and her saliva. Inchoate images from colonial Taiwan waft before him as he tries to comprehend the chimera. His vision smoky, he glimpses shifting ghost-dances on a screen played for his eyes alone.Ultimately, vengeful and anonymous spirits commandeer Cheng-Ming's sight so that he cannot distinguish past from present, himself from another. The Hell Screens is a luminous, powerful fugue best circled round and round, viewed from the corner of the eye, evasive.
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