“Scales of Injustice. The Complete Fiction of Loā Hô.

Lōa Hô (also Lai He, 1894-1943) was a pioneering writer from Taiwan often called the ‘father of New Taiwanese Literature’. As a doctor during the colonial period in Taiwan, Loa witnessed the cruelty of Japanese rule and wrote stories which display both his sense of justice and social insight. His writing often utilized irony and satire to criticize the status quo, and his work provides a fascinating window into the struggle for Taiwanese self-determination during the early twentieth century.

Scales of Injustice contains the complete fiction of Loa Hô, with an expert introduction from Pei-yin Lin and explanatory notes by translator Darryl Sterk.

A very rare book to find in English. So, I ended up buying it from the publisher, Honford Star, for a very reasonable price. They are a smaller publisher that is focused on publishing books from East Asia.

For anyone interested in the what life was like for the ‘common man’ during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, this is a good place to start.

I didn’t find the earlier stories as interesting as the later ones. The footnotes are very extensive, befitting the importance of this book to Taiwanese literature.

Note about the author’s name: His name is Lōa Hô in Taiwanese, and Lai He 賴和 in Mandarin.

Rating: ★★★★ Book #60 in my #ReadingChallenge2021 #LaiHe #TaiwaneseLit #Taiwan #ColonialWriting #Fiction #ShortStory #LōaHô”,