Decayed Land is the third novel in Chung Wenyin’s Island Trilogy, and an extraordinary conclusion to a magnificent achievement. But rather than calling the work a “trilogy” perhaps it is better to think of it as a triptych – especially for the sake of English readers new to Chung’s work. Although they are related, each novel can stand on its own. This is particularly important since the second novel, Decayed History has not as yet been translated. The first novel, Decayed Lust is set in modern Taipei and features several women who have left their respective hometowns to pursue education, career, and sexual adventure in the metropolis. Decayed Land returns one of the women, a writer, to her ancestral village which inaugurates a retelling of a familial history from the end of the Ching Dynasty to the present, focusing on the generations of women who endured and sustained the life of the community. Since it is safe to assume that any reader of the translation would be motivated by an interest in Taiwanese culture, I think one inroad into the culture is observing differences between the English and the Chinese titles. In English: Decayed Lust, Decayed History, and Decayed Land bespeak the aftermath of catastrophe, or the exhaustion of different aspects of human being-in-the-world: desire, time, and place. The novels’ original titles, however, are adopted from classical Chinese poetic forms, in other words- the cultural modes of expression that offer a response to the tragedies that have befallen the people, expressions that commemorate what has happened while forming a legacy for those who come later and carry on. The modes themselves also offer a kind of emblem for each novel’s particular focus and a template for the configurations of affect evoked: 豔歌行 Yang ge hsing – a poem of splendid feasts or eroticism 短歌行 Duan ge hsing – the name of a poem of life shortly before a decisive battle. 傷歌行Shang ge hsing – A poem of lament