{"product_id":"9781590177389","title":"Last Words from Montmartre","description":"An NYRB Classics Original\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the pioneering Taiwanese novelist  Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind  her unpublished masterpiece, \u003ci\u003eLast Words from Montmartre\u003c\/i\u003e. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, \u003ci\u003eLast Words\u003c\/i\u003e tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young  women—their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating  aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes,  from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic  musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu’s genre-bending novel is at  once a psychological thriller, a sublime romance, and the author’s own  suicide note.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe letters (which, Qiu tells us, can be read in  any order) leap between Paris, Taipei, and Tokyo. They display wrenching  insights into what it means to live between cultures, languages, and  genders—until the genderless character Zoë appears, and the narrator’s  spiritual and physical identity is transformed. As powerfully raw and  transcendent as Mishima’s \u003ci\u003eConfessions of a Mask\u003c\/i\u003e, Goethe’s \u003ci\u003eThe Sorrows of Young Werther\u003c\/i\u003e, and Theresa Cha’s \u003ci\u003eDictée\u003c\/i\u003e, to name but a few,\u003ci\u003e Last Words from Montmartre\u003c\/i\u003e proves Qiu Miaojin to be one of the finest experimentalists and modernist Chinese-language writers of our generation.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47172536140016,"sku":"9781590177389","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781590177389_p0.jpg?v=1763804478","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781590177389","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}