Taipei People by Pai Hsien-yung

Welcome to Taipei, Taiwan. The Chinese Civil War is now long over, but its shadow still haunts the city’s lost souls.

On the eve of her retirement, a dancer recalls the gentle boy she met in her youth. She loved him then – and never saw him again.

Out at a deserted shoreline, a young man identifies the body of a manservant. He was a soldier once; he is nothing now.

As night sets in, a group of men gather around a lotus pond in the park. There, they tell tales of a time that can never be returned to and search for connection in the darkness.

A masterwork of modern Chinese literature, Taipei People is a collection of dark, wistful stories following the lives and losses of those who fled to Taipei after the 1949 Communist takeover of mainland China.

Intimately drawn, universally powerful, these are tales for anyone who has ever left home, for anyone who has grown up and grown away, for anyone who has said goodbye, and for all those who were not able to.