With "Notes of a Lonely Man", the first Taiwanese novel about HIV is now being published in German
Aids novels have become a rare breed of book. While in the mid-1990s hardly anything was written about HIV other than dying gay men, the new Aids, the relatively everyday life with the therapy, is no longer such a fertile field for writers. At least in the countries where the majority of Aids literature has been written to date, Central Europe and the USA.
With "Notes of a Lonely Man", one of the few Taiwanese books on the subject is now being published in German. It is well worth reading.
The novel is the gay narrator's look back at his life and that of his childhood friend who has AIDS. A text full of metaphors, allusions and intellectual arabesques, which refers to popular culture as well as Fellini, Lévi-Strauss and classical Chinese poetry. Great, wonderful, rich literature. The usual gay themes are dealt with: Love and sex, life on the fringes of societies, family difficulties, beauty mania and building a world of one's own that is not shaped by role models. The language is dense and will not let you go. Not an underground or beach read, rather something for a rainy summer weekend on the couch at home.
The fact that the reader often feels transported back to the 90s when reading the novel is due to the fact that it was written in 1994. Good things take time. But the fact that "Notizen..." can now be read in German at all is not a simple response to readers' needs: The translation from English was supported with funds from the German Foreign Office. Which was probably necessary to finance it in the first place.
What is also fascinating about the book is that it is one of the very few AIDS texts written by a woman. The author, Chu Tien-wen, is one of Taiwan's best-known female writers. She comes from a family of intellectuals and worked successfully as a screenwriter, journalist and editor before winning the China Times won.
Rightly so, "Notes of a Lonely Man" should be read.
(pasch)
Chu Tien-wen "Notes of a lonely man" Angkor Verlag, 236 pages. 19,90 €
