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Město Duchů Kevina Chena
Ghost Town by Kevin Chen
Event by: literarnyklub.sk, Větrné mlýny
Talks & discussions
About event
A meeting with Taiwanese author Kevin Chen on the occasion of the publication of the novel City of Ghosts will offer insight into a multi-layered story about family, memories and return. In an intimate and playfully hypocritical book, the book combines reality with fantastical elements and opens up the themes of identity, otherness and growing up.
Kevin Chen (Chen S'-chung) grew up in an environment strongly shaped by patriarchal expectations, in which he also coped with his gay identity. For him, writing represents both a way of survival and personal redemption. In his prose, he creates multi-layered, vivid and often contrasting worlds, in which the intense emotional experience of the characters meets the colorful atmosphere of the environment in which they live. His style is playful, dynamic and at times deconstructive – he transforms, disrupts and recomposes traditional Chinese literary practices into new forms. Chen is a distinctive voice of marginalized communities and contemporary Asian literature. It is capable of enthralling, unsettling and stimulating the reader to think. His novel City of Ghosts (2019), set in the author's hometown, was translated into twelve languages and received significant international acclaim. The Czech edition is currently being published in a translation by Denis Molčanov.
The meeting will introduce the creation of the novel, the author's inspiration and the questions that constantly trouble us. In cooperation with the publishing house Větrné mlýny, with the support of TECA, the Center for Taiwanese Studies in Bratislava, the Foundation of the City of Bratislava, the Author's Society LITA and the Old Town.
Photo: Kateřina Rusňáková © Authors' Reading Month
Kevin Chen (Chen S'-chung) grew up in an environment strongly shaped by patriarchal expectations, in which he also coped with his gay identity. For him, writing represents both a way of survival and personal redemption. In his prose, he creates multi-layered, vivid and often contrasting worlds, in which the intense emotional experience of the characters meets the colorful atmosphere of the environment in which they live. His style is playful, dynamic and at times deconstructive – he transforms, disrupts and recomposes traditional Chinese literary practices into new forms. Chen is a distinctive voice of marginalized communities and contemporary Asian literature. It is capable of enthralling, unsettling and stimulating the reader to think. His novel City of Ghosts (2019), set in the author's hometown, was translated into twelve languages and received significant international acclaim. The Czech edition is currently being published in a translation by Denis Molčanov.
The meeting will introduce the creation of the novel, the author's inspiration and the questions that constantly trouble us. In cooperation with the publishing house Větrné mlýny, with the support of TECA, the Center for Taiwanese Studies in Bratislava, the Foundation of the City of Bratislava, the Author's Society LITA and the Old Town.
Photo: Kateřina Rusňáková © Authors' Reading Month