Black wings. Rapongan S.

Syaman Rapongan - Taiwanese writer, representative of the Tao people. In the novel “Black Wings”, the story of friendship and growing up of four boys develops against the backdrop of the vast expanses surrounding the orchid island in the Pacific Ocean. For thousands of years, Tao people retained a traditional way of life, treating the marine inhabitants. At the same time, they had a special reverence for their totem - flying fish. But at the end of the 20th century, a new generation is faced with a choice: whether to adopt a modern lifestyle ethnically and culturally alien to them by the Taiwan population or remain on the orchid island and live according to the customs of the ancestors.

Syaman's debut romance “Black Wings” is one of the most striking and original novels of growing up in prose in Chinese. He was published in Taibe in 1998 and awarded several literary awards, including the Literary Prize with Zho-Lu. The author explores the theme of the collision of two cultures and turns to his native Tao language, creating parallel dialogs in two languages. In this edition, the reader has the opportunity to get acquainted with the texts in the language of the indigenous people of Tao: the dialogs are preserved in the author’s spelling and are given in phonetic transcription in Russian.