A review by laurj
Family Catastrophe: A Modernist Novel by Wen-Hsing Wang

4.0

Really enjoyed this read, translation was easy to follow, it didn't really maintain the off-ness of modernist literature that my friends who read it in it Chinese say it was penned in (this translation comes 20 years after it was published). I felt my own complicated feelings toward my parents mirrored in the protagonist - though by the end his behavior has become so extreme he's barely a sympathetic character. The reader is forced to reckon with the nuance of familial relationships and how we exist as perpetually morally gray.