Chen Yingzhen's Third World

This is Chen Kuan-Hsing's latest heartfelt work since "Asia as Method." The book is divided into seven chapters, and at first glance, you might mistake it for a treatise on Chen Ying-zhen. However, upon opening any chapter and diligently reading a few paragraphs, you'll discover that this is a book truly unique in both its style and content, by no means a simple work of literary criticism on an author. I use the word "heartfelt" not just because it took a considerable amount of time to complete, approximately fifteen years, but more so because this is not a book written merely from diligent thought in a study. Its pages are filled with the author's twenty-plus years of "wandering" across East Asia, and even the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean. It's a book built upon the feelings he continuously accumulated along this journey, poured out repeatedly. Towards Chen Ying-zhen, Kuan-Hsing doesn't adopt a devotee's attitude of constant attendance and unwavering loyalty. He seems more like a wandering ascetic, carrying reverence for the ancestral temple, continuously heading towards new horizons. While meticulously quoting and analyzing Chen Ying-zhen, he also constantly departs from this quotation and analysis; he will, of course, return, but then he will leave again... It is in this back and forth that a rich, unbridled discourse emerges, a fluid connection between fiction and personal experience, and those assertions that provoke your close attention, all gush forth from the page.