The Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in Italy collaborated with Add Editore, a publishing house in Turin, to publish the Italian version of "The Membranes (膜)" by the queer science fiction writer Chi Ta-wei (紀大偉) this October. To promote the novel, the author was invited to visit four Italian cities, including Milan, Lucca, Perugia, and Rome, participating in a series of seminars to exchange ideas with local readers. The event will take place from Oct. 27 through Nov. 3.
"The Membranes" was published in 1995 and has sold copyrights to the international market in the past twenty years. Supported by the Grant for the Publication of Taiwanese Works in Translation set up by the Ministry of Culture, the Italian version of "The Membranes" is translated by Alessandra Pezza, an Italian translator and professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca, and published by Add Editore. The novel received recommendations from many news media outlets soon after it was published in Italy. The newsletter "Artribune" acclaimed that "The Membranes" came out more than three years earlier than the Hollywood sci-fi movie "Matrix" was released in 1999, which shows the epochal innovation of this sci-fi novel."
There will be five seminars respectively held at Feltrinelli, the second-biggest chain bookstore in Milan on Oct. 27 and at the science fiction session of Lucca Comics & Games on Oct. 29, the largest comic festival in Europe. The Oct. 29 event will be hosted by Italian sci-fi novelist Emanuele Manco and joined by author Francesco Verso to have discussions with Chi. Then Chi will head to Perugia and Rome for the next promotional events.
In "The Membranes," Chi not only paid attention to the ecosystem destruction but also explored issues like scientific ethics, capitalist hegemony, and even the fluidity and diversity of gender. The Italian news media then described the writing style in this novel as "cyberpunk aesthetics."