Overview

From 1976 to 1989, Hai Fan was part of the guerrilla forces of the Malayan Communist Party. These short stories are inspired by his experiences during his thirteen years in the rainforest. Struggling through an arduous trek, two comrades pine for each other but don't know how to declare their love; a woman who has annoyed all her comrades finally wins their approval when she finds a mythical mousedeer; improvising around the lack of ingredients, a perpetually hungry guerrilla makes delicious cakes from cassava and elephant fat. The rainforest may be a dangerous place where death awaits, but so do love, desire and hope. Delicious Hunger is a book about the moments in and between warfare, when hunger is so palpable it can be tasted, and the natural world becomes an extension of the body. Deftly translated by Jeremy Tiang, Hai Fan's stories are about a group of people who chose to fight for a better world and, in the process, built their own.

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9781917126021

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Reviews

'This haunting series of stories of ingenuity, solidarity, comradeship and futility is an impressive example of history as written by the defeated, but it's more than that too - an almost hallucinatory dispatch from another world.'- Owen Hatherley, author of Landscapes of Communism and Trans-Europe Express --Owen Hatherley

'The revolutionaries' daily lives come into sharp relief in Fan's stories, which take on added depth through their exploration of themes of friendship, love, and purpose. Readers will find much to savor in these impassioned and unique tales.' --Publisher Weekly'This haunting series of stories of ingenuity, solidarity, comradeship and futility is an impressive example of history as written by the defeated, but it's more than that too - an almost hallucinatory dispatch from another world.'-- Owen Hatherley, author of Landscapes of Communism and Trans-Europe Express 'In Delicious Hunger, a new award-winning collection of short stories, Hai Fan blends elements of socialist tradition with evocative modernist techniques. The result is an almost unreal atmosphere, populated by individuals navigating complex emotions; a rainforest awakens from a slumber, enshrouding the comrades within it in the lush cloak of camaraderie, splintered by bullets and bombs.' --Suyin Haynes, Jacobin --Owen Hatherley

Author Information

Hai Fan (b. 1953) entered the rainforest in 1976 as a soldier of the Malayan Communist Party and spent the next thirteen years carrying out jungle guerrilla warfare near the Malaysia-Thai border. He now lives in Singapore. Jeremy Tiang has translated over thirty books from Chinese, including novels by Yan Ge, Yeng Pway Ngon, Lo Yi-Chin and Zhang Yueran. He also writes and translates plays. His novel, State of Emergency, won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. He lives in Flushing, Queens.

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