Smalltown Godzilla

A bold debut story collection confronting diasporic inheritance and empire’s residue with satire and surrealism Across eight stories set largely in Taipei and smalltown Malaysia, monsters both literal and metaphorical move through landscapes ravaged by time, carrying the weight of history, capitalism, and cultural rupture. In “Godzilla at My Hometown’s Weddings and Funerals,” the arrival of a McDonald’s exposes a rural town to strange, overwhelming global forces. In “Paradise,” an aging guerrilla fighter and his young son seek refuge in a monstrous traveling carnival. In “Ah Ma in the Shithole,” the narrator studies abroad to escape his dysfunctional family of origin only to reencounter the same absurdity and horror from his childhood in newly harrowing forms. Smalltown Godzilla fuses social satire, magical realism, and formal experimentation to interrogate the fractured identities history leaves in its wake. In YZ Chin’s finely calibrated translation, Teng Kuan Kiat moves with humor, tonal agility, and emotional precision to deliver a clarifying shock to the senses.