WINNER OF THE 2018 LUCIEN STRYK ASIAN TRANSLATION PRIZE The English-language premiere of Qiu
Miaojin's coming-of-age novel about queer teenagers in Taiwan a cult classic in China and
winner of the 1995 China Times Literature Award. An NYRB Classics Original Set in the
post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of
queer misfits discovering love friendship and artistic affinity while hardly studying at
Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator
nicknamed Lazi this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries vignettes mash notes
aphorisms exegesis and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure.
Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling an older woman Lazi turns for support to
a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled self-destructive
gay lover as well as a bored mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist
girlfriend. Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through
radical self-inquiry Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a
singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.
