ESWN on Censorship in Taiwan in the Bad Old Days...

Don't miss ESWN's great post on censorship in Taiwan and the Eileen Chang novel The Naked Earth:

As a literary work, Naked Earth does not get much respect. It is well-known that this book was commissioned by the United States Information Services with a general outline being supplied to the author to write the novel on demand. The author would eventually write Chinese-language and English-language editions. This was anti-Communist propaganda completed in 1954, even if it was better written than most books in that "politically correct" category. The assumption was that the book would be published in "free China" (namely, Taiwan and Hong Kong) so that people can learn how horrible things are inside China.

However, there was a problem. It happened that the author was also given some leeway with respect to the details. And that would prove to be troublesome.

[Taiwan]