The author of Falling Leaves, a bestseller which has sold over one million copies worldwide, has arrived in Taipei to promote the Chinese translation of her first book.
The book, which tells the story of overseas Chinese returning to their homeland like "falling leaves returning to roots," is largely based on her family history, said Adeline Yen Mah.
The book describes an isolated young girl growing up a traditional Chinese family in the early 20th century, and is dedicated to Yen's aunt who figures prominently in the book.
In Fallen Leaves, Yen describes how her father, a Shanghai-based tycoon, remarried a French-Chinese woman. Other members of the Yen family, including her maternal grandfather, her mother's single sister and her four siblings, were downgraded to a status lower than that of the German shepherd dog her new step-mother kept.
Yen said she found it amazing that she, a woman who dared not speak at the dining table before the age of 14, could write a memoir so many years later. She finished the book in early 1997, and it was published later that year.
Her family was not pleased with the book, she said, as they felt it unveiled details that they considered "unbearably shameful."
"I don't blame them [the family members]. All I did was try to speak out for those who were traditionally voiceless and deprived in a closed and suffocating old Chinese society," she said.
The British Broadcasting Corp has adapted the book into a documentary series, and the NBC is working on a mini-series based on the book, Yen added.
Born in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin in 1937, Yen spent her formative years in Shanghai and Hong Kong. After obtaining her PhD in medicine from London University, she moved to the United States to practice in 1964. She has now given up her medical career to pursue writing full time.
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