One thing that has been keeping Wind&Bones co-director Dr Will Buckingham busy lately is working on a translation of the graphic novel 神祕列車 (Mystery Train), an adaptation of the story of the same name by Kan Yao-ming (甘耀明), with a script by Shih Meng-hsieh (食夢蟹), and wonderful illustrations by Sen (森森).
The story is a powerful, hallucinatory journey into the history of Taiwan’s White Terror, exploring the lasting effects of these long decades of political oppression, and the silence that envelops so many survivors.
Will has been working on this as a part of the Books from Taiwan initiative, from the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture. The aim is to translate books—or parts of books—so that they can be offered to the international market.
Taiwan is a small country, and one that is often seen in terms of bigger geopolitical issues, rather than as a place in and of itself. Literature is one way—and a powerful one—of bringing to light stories these stories about what it means to be Taiwanese, here in the 21st Century. And so it really is an honour for Will to be playing a small part in this project.
You can read more over on Will’s website.
