This is the second of two linked novels set in Taiwan by a local writer and the sequel to Losing Plum Blossom, issued last year. If your tastes runs to romantic fiction with a strong element of political intrigue, this could be the book for you. This latest installment could even be said to aspire to being a Taiwanese Sex and the City or Gone With the Wind. So, how far does it succeed?
The story of The Black King follows the fortunes of Clarissa, an American widow who, following the death of her husband in Vietnam, has married a Taiwanese orthopedic surgeon. Her central problem is that her marriage has never been consummated because her husband, Ahmed, is gay and has a boyfriend who works alongside him in the same Taipei hospital he works in. Ahmed ("An-men" in Chinese, but Clarissa finds "Ahmed" more romantic), has a Japanese father who now lives in Tokyo but has a dark past as the man responsible for some brutally-run prisoner-of-war camps in Taiwan during World War II.
Clarissa has a wide range of men friends who she meets in Taipei bars, embarking on tentative affairs with more than one of them. There's the good-looking Nathan; an agent of US intelligence services called Sam; Arthur, for whom she is something of a mother-substitute; a Catholic priest called Jack; and several more.
Taipei locations naturally abound, lightly disguised. There are bugged rooms in the "Great Hotel," love trysts in the "Margarita" and "Lilac" hotels, assignations at the "Swine and the Hock" and "Fox and the Flounder" pubs in the twilight zone, a luxurious house on "Central Mountain Road," and so on.
There's plenty of politics here too. Characters are affiliated to either the "China reunification side" or the "Underground Taiwan Independence Movement." Japan believes anything approaching an independent Taiwan would effectively throw the island back under its control, while the US is attempting to rein in pro-independence radicals, while at the same time placing limits on the growth of Chinese power in the Pacific region. And there's a pseudo-priest from Chechnya called Igor who, prior to the novel's opening, has been up to no good among Aborigines in the mountains above Hualien.
In order to assess how successful this novel is, we should ask what kind of book it is. Is it the product of a local Dame Barbara Cartland, queen of British romantic fiction, some sort of parody of that genre, or the far-sighted product of an academic who has also produced a volume of anthropological essays? The fairest answer is probably that it's something of all three, but with more of the first than the others, plus elements of James Bond thrown in.
With its mix of political, inter-racial, and romantic entanglements this is a novel that isn't afraid to tackle big issues. There are
problems, nevertheless. To begin with, the story's dates are hard to get to grips with. Ahmed is presented as having been traumatized by troops during the 228 Incident in 1947. Yet the novel is set in the 21st century -- there are references to the US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. This would put Ahmed, at his youngest, somewhere in his mid-60s, yet he is depicted as being about to take up a scholarship to further his medical studies in Texas. (Even more problematically, Clarissa is represented as being significantly older than Ahmed.) Furthermore, the tone and details of the novel suggest an older Taipei than today's city. On these grounds my guess is that this is a work that's been on the stocks for some time and has recently been revised for
RSS