Lin Yi-Han's U.S. publisher, HarperVia, hails Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise as "the most influential book of Taiwan's #MeToo movement." Lin's harrowing and haunting portrayal highlights the lives of girls and women who reside in the same high-end apartment complex. Since childhood, Fang Si-Chi and Liu Yi-Ting are "soulmates," sharing a precocious love of literature--and an adolescent crush on Teacher Lee. Iwen, the young wife of the building's "especially rich" family's heir, feeds them, literally (the best afternoon snacks) and intellectually (from Du Fu to Dostoyevsky). The gifted girls are sent to Taipei for high school, where Si-Chi confesses to Yi-Ting that she's Teacher Lee's "girlfriend." The reality is a sanity-breaking nightmare that began with pernicious grooming by a serial pedophile 37 years older who raped Si-Chi when she was 13, entrapping her in years of relentless sexual manipulation. Her survival depends on believing she's experiencing "love paradise."
With more than a million copies sold globally, this "feminist manifesto" arrives stateside in a lyrical translation by Taiwan-born polyglot Jenna Tang, whose ending note provides further illuminating context, including her own transformative, almost three-year anglophone journey with this title. Although the cover clearly states that the book is "a novel," its autobiographical elements are many; following Lin's 2017 death at age 26, her parents released a statement confirming the veracity of Lin's sexual abuse that led to her suicide. Lin breaks all silence to write unreservedly about predation and violence. Her first and final book proves to be wrenching, don't-dare-turn-away testimony demanding acknowledgement, empathy, and support. --Terry Hong