Crocodile Notes

Qiu Miaojin's debut novel

A same-sex love story that shook Taiwan

Literary classics that opened an era

Recommended by Jiang Xun, Luo Yijun and Chen Xue

On the edge of the life zone, the entanglement of same-sex lust, in the cold and helpless wilderness of life, listen to Qiu Miaojin, the sincere confession of a lonely crocodile, a violent and passionate love song of despair...

For this seemingly innate homosexuality, which cannot be chosen or changed, should we face it bravely, or struggle against it? How difficult it is to face the love deep in the heart and the sorrow that no one can put it away and no one understands, and no matter how desperate and painful the story is, at the most brilliant moment of life, it will bloom with surprising warmth and beauty...

"No matter how much pain and suffering I have to suffer, I still want to say that love is immortal."

Notes of a Crocodile is Qiu Miaojin's most important novel, and it is also a true portrayal of the perplexity and distress of college students in Taiwan at the end of the 20th century.

The book is divided into eight chapters, most of which are set against the background of university life, describing the emotional life and mental journey of seven heroes and heroines who are homosexual and bisexual, and depicting the brand-new life of college students at that time through liberated views of sex and gender. The spiritual world and the emotional experience that is not recognized bring pain and gain to each other's growth process. In other chapters, the monologue of an anthropomorphic crocodile is combined into fables independent of the main plot, satirizing and alluding to the lonely and oppressed fate of "crocodiles/sexuals" in human society. These interspersed narrative clues use polyphonic double voice structure to affect the psychological and political aspects of the same theme.

Now I am forty-five years old, since I met Qiu Miaojin, or we were so young (with glowing eyes and horns on the top of the head), argued several times but were friendly peers, standing on tiptoe and imagining what could and "should" be written What kind of novel, it has been twenty years. I still meet those Lazi who are five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years younger than me at different times, and still talk about Qiu Miaojin devoutly with me...I feel that she has become the "Republic of Lazi" for Taiwanese lesbians, A portrait on a Hidden Time currency. ——Luo Yijun

Her works are eulogized, quoted, discussed, and researched by everyone. Her life, deeds, and even the novels, writers, and film directors she read and admired have become a mountain that can be viewed from anywhere in the lesbian world. That generation of literary and artistic youths imitated the objects of reference, and some people even said directly, "Qiu Miaojin is my god."

——Chen Xue