About the event: Listed in the New York Times’ 2022 Booklist, “33 Works of Fiction and Poetry Coming This Fall,” Kevin Chen’s Ghost Town won multiple literary awards after its release in Taiwan in 2019. It has been translated into English, Korean, Vietnamese, Italian, and other languages.
The story is about a small town in Taiwan’s countryside and a family haunted by its own ghosts. The protagonist, Chen Tien-Hong, has just been released from prison after killing his boyfriend, and he returns from Berlin to his desolate hometown, Yongjing, in Changhua County, the same place he fled years ago to escape from family expectations and seek acceptance as a gay man. He arrives during the Ghost Festival, a traditional Taiwanese festival in which it is said that the gates of hell are wide open, adding hellish elements to Chen’s and his five sisters’ lives. The story is told through a number of voices-both living and dead-and moves back and forth through time. As the story evolves, readers come closer to the crux of the family’s dysfunction and piece together why Chen committed the murder.