By Teng Kuan Kiat
Translated from Chinese by YZ Chin
A surreal, pathbreaking debut story collection from a contemporary Chinese Malaysian voice, exploring themes of diaspora, neocolonialism, and cultural lineage
Smalltown Godzilla introduces anglophone readers to a bold new voice in Mahua literature—a vibrant tradition of ethnic Chinese writers from Malaysia. Drawing on this diasporic lineage, Teng Kuan Kiat has crafted eight formally inventive stories, each with its own uncanny architecture. In Teng’s absurd worlds, language itself becomes an unstable material, subject to the same global forces transforming smalltown Malaysia.
In “Godzilla at My Hometown’s Weddings and Funerals,” the influences of Hollywood and the arrival of a McDonald’s threaten to disrupt the rhythms of rural life. In “Lin Yutang’s Typewriter,” the scholar sets out to invent a machine to save the Chinese language from obsolescence in a rapidly modernizing world. In “Paradise,” an aging guerrilla fighter and his young son seek refuge in a multilingual traveling carnival. And in “Ah Ma in the Shithole,” the narrator studies abroad in Taiwan to escape his dysfunctional family, only to reencounter the same horrors from his childhood in newly harrowing forms.
In YZ Chin’s finely calibrated translation, Teng Kuan Kiat’s metafiction probes the fractured identities history leaves in its wake. With brash humor and tonal agility, Smalltown Godzilla precisely renders the unsettling dislocations of modern life.
“Smalltown Godzilla is a revelatory and shocking collection of stories that rearranged my brain. I was reminded of works by Lucrecia Martel and Ottessa Moshfegh in Teng Kuan Kiat's radical depictions of loneliness, violence, modernization, and love. A virtuosic debut.” - Patrick Cottrell, author of Afternoon Hours of a Hermit
"YZ Chin's rhythmic, high-energy translation of these daringly unpredictable, often absurd, funny and dark stories filled me with absolute delight. Friends and businesses come and go, complicated family abounds, all while the modern world encroaches. Reminiscent of McMurtry's The Last Picture Show but told through the looking-glass. Smalltown Godzilla is the kind of book you have to read standing up and leaves you wanting more." - Fernando A. Flores, author of Brother Brontë
“The past looms large in Teng Kuan Kiat’s Smalltown Godzilla as its characters try to escape their fates. Twisty, carnivalesque, and very clever, this short story collection is full of thwarted sublimity.” - Missouri Williams, author of The Vivisectors