ABSTRACT
End of the River (大河盡頭, 2008–10), by Borneo-born Sinophone Taiwan author Li Yongping (李永平), is at once a fictionalized memoir, tropical adventure tale, coming-of-age narrative, and ghost story. It relates fifteen-year-old Yong’s adventures during what becomes a haunted upriver journey to Batu Tipan with his father’s Dutch-Indonesian friend Christina van Loon, who endured sexual enslavement during Japan’s occupation of Borneo. The novel’s characters are haunted by ghosts, abuse, and traumas traceable to Japanese occupation and colonialism. By combining spectral rhetoric of recurrence with Yong’s coming-of-age narrative, the novel critiques colonialism and imperialism, and their pernicious persistence in Borneo’s present; it also critiques Li’s own masculinity and complex relationship with Borneo.
