Chinese Name: 伊格言
Birth Name: 鄭亦煦 (Zheng Yi-xu)
Born: November 6, 1977
Place of Birth: Tainan (Southern Taiwan)
Did You Know?
Egoyan Zheng, a passionate movie lover, took his pen name from the Canadian-Armenian director Atom Egoyan, who is known for his writing and directing talents alike. The director Egoyan excels at using light, shadow, and spatial awareness to create stunning visual effects in his films, which are highly regarded for their artistic value.
Egoyan Zheng grew up in Xinying District (新營區), Tainan City, in a family of doctors—his father is a pediatrician and his mother is a pharmacist. After graduating from high school, Zheng was offered entry to the Psychology Department at National Taiwan University. However, he later decided to pursue a career as a psychiatrist, so he changed his major and successfully entered medical school at Taipei Medical University. During his time in medical school, he struggled greatly to adjust and found the experience to be extremely painful, both mentally and physically. After much struggle, he began to consider leaving the medical field. With a deep passion for literature, Egoyan Zheng ultimately decided to pursue his literary dreams and dropped out of medical school during his fourth year to apply to the Graduate Institute of Chinese Literature at Tamkang University (淡江大學).
Zheng thrived in this program, immersing himself in the subject. He not only studied modern literature but also participated in literary competitions to hone his creative abilities. During his studies, he won the Unitas Newcomer Award (聯合文學小說新人獎) and went on to receive several other Taiwanese literary awards. He was also nominated for international awards such as the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.
In 2003, Egoyan Zheng published his first collection of short stories, "Man in the Urn (甕中人)," which was hailed as a modern classic. Drawing from his experiences and encounters in medical school, the author captured a certain cruel aesthetic of death and illness. Combining these pale and cold images, he successfully created his own spin on tales of love and death. With his mastery of language, he wrote about decaying things in a beautiful, poetic manner, finding a sense of the sublime in the midst of decline. He also attempted to incorporate the more formal register of Hokkien into written Chinese, injecting new vitality into nativist literature.
In 2010, Egoyan Zheng's science fiction novel "The Dream Devourer (噬夢人)" became a bestseller of the year. The author showcased his boundless imagination and unique creativity, constructing a futuristic world set in the 23rd century. The protagonist, a bioengineered human disguised as an ordinary human, embarks on a journey to uncover the truth, navigating through a vast maze of intricate plot elements combining mystery and espionage. Through this, readers are shown fantastical visions woven throughout the story.
In 2013, he released the nuclear disaster prophecy novel "Ground Zero (零地點)." The story begins with an amnesiac nuclear plant engineer and, through a reverse chronological narrative approach, reveals the protagonist's search for his own identity while being closely monitored by the political elite who fear the recovery of his memories and the subsequent exposing of the immense political interests and lies. Zheng portrayed a tragic nuclear explosion, attempting to present the so-called "truth" as controlled by the ruling class and the absurdity of civilization's evolution, resulting in irreparable mistakes intertwined with human greed and weakness.
In his 2021 science fiction novel "Zero Degrees of Separation (零度分離)," Egoyan Zheng sets the story in a cyberpunk world 200 years in the future, contemplating how we should position ourselves in relation to neural beings that are "somewhat like humans, yet not quite." Zheng says that to this day, there is still no consensus on what "life" or "consciousness" truly is, and it is foreseeable that the future world will inevitably be one in which humans and AI coexist. If AI truly possesses "intelligence," how should we face this new sapient species sharing the Earth with us?
Egoyan Zheng always approaches his work as a humble explorer, focusing on the question of human existence. Through his science fiction writing, he expands the inquiry into what it means to be human and reflects on civilization, using his writing to shed light on social issues. To him, the world is like a shadow play, where people only see the blurry figures on the screen. These figures may have different interpretations for different people. His works are like a knife, cutting through the screen, creating a rift and offering people a glimpse of what reality truly looks like.