Fang Si-chi's First Love Paradise: A Novel

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The most influential book of Taiwans #MeToo movementa heartbreaking account of sexual violence and a remarkable reinvention of the trauma plot, turning the traditional Lolita narrative upside down as it explores womens vulnerability, victimization, and the lengths they will go to survive.

Thirteen-year-old Fang Si-Chi lives with her family in an upscale apartment complex in Taiwan, a tightknit community of strict yet doting parents and privileged children raised to be ambitious, dutiful, and virtuous. She and her neighbor Liu Yi-Ting bond over their love of learning and books, devouring classic worksProust, Gabriel Garca Mrquez, the very best Chinese writers. Yet, it is their lack of real-world education that makes them true kindred spirits.

Si-Chis innocence is irresistible to Lee Guo-hua, a revered cram literature teacher and serial predator who lives in her building. When he offers to tutor the academic-minded girls for free, their parentsunaware of Lees true naturehappily accept. While Yi-Tings studies with Lee are straightforward, Si-Chi learns about things no one teaches them in schoollessons about sex and love that will change the course of her life. Confused and uncertain, Si-Chi turns to her beloved books for guidance. But literature tells her nothing honest about rape or how to cope with the trauma of abuse. For her own salvation, the young girl begins to think of her personal hell as her first love paradise, where the power of love, no matter how twisted, gives her the strength to survive.

One of the biggest books to come out of Taiwan in the last decade, Fang Si-Chis First Love Paradise is a chilling tale of grooming and its lingering trauma, and the power structures that allow it to flourish. Insightful, unsettling, emotionally raw, it is a staggering work of literature that reverberates across cultures and forces us to confront painful truths about the vulnerability and strength of women and those who use and hurt them.

Translated from the Chinese by Jenna Tang