Delicious Hunger
Winner of the PEN Translates award
Available in paperback and e-book format. Paperback + E-book bundle available below: Get the e-book at 50% off with each purchase of a paperback.
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.
Delicious Hunger
Slide to see
Paperback
$24.00 SGD
E-book
$24.00 SGD
Reviews
"Rarely does a work of Singapore literature manage to render the dense tropical music of the jungle–or as Chinese-language writer Hai Fan puts it, “the rainforest talking in its sleep”. The former Malayan Communist Party fighter’s short stories are intimate–though not naively sympathetic–sketches of the lives of the guerillas who fought in the rainforests in the last decades of the Cold War." —The Straits Times
"As a guerrilla fighter in the Malayan Communist Party’s 12th Regiment, Hai Fan has dedicated himself to weaving his thirteen years of military life into the fabric of grand history. Through his work, he not only brings vibrant colour to the grey areas of this historical period but also, with his documentary-style writing, significantly narrows the distance between readers and the past." —Hee Wai Siam, Associate Professor of Chinese, Nanyang Technological University
"Through eleven stories forged over thirteen years, readers can journey through verdant rainforests where characters move with purpose–some seen, some overlooked, some forgotten. While moments of gunfire and peril punctuate these brilliant tales, the collection's core lies in the everyday rhythms of jungle life: planting crops, hunting, crossing rivers, setting mines, storing provisions, and standing guard–military necessities that became the daily existence for which warriors like Hai Fan had risked everything." —Dr Tan Chee Lay, scholar, poet, artist
"At once poetic and visceral, haunting yet lyrical, Delicious Hunger immerses the reader in the sensory realities of jungle life: the sweetness of juice from woody vines, more refreshing than Coca-Cola; the tender gaze of a trapped mouse deer, so disarming it stays its captor’s hand; and the enchanting scent of wild mango stored in an earthenware jar, preserving not just fruit but fragile emotions. With its compelling narratives and historical depth, Delicious Hunger is essential reading for those interested in revolutionary movements, post-colonial resistance and the global Cold War." —Zhou Taomo, Associate Professor, the Department of Chinese Studies Dean’s Chair, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore Author of Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War
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