Gan Yao-ming

Gan Yao-ming (Chinese: 甘耀明 ; born 2 February 1972) is a Taiwanese author from Miaoli County. He graduated from the Chinese department of Tunghai University. He earned a master's degree in Creative Writing and English Literature from National Dong Hwa University. Before becoming a full-time fiction writer, Gan worked as a reporter, as a middle school teacher, and as a playwright of a small theater. Widely recognized as one of the best authors of his generation, Gan has received various literary awards, including the United Daily News Literature Prize, the Lin Rong-San Literature Prize, Wu Zhuo-liu Literature Prize, and the United Daily New Novelist Prize. In 2010, his novel Killing Ghosts won the Award of Taipei International Book Fair, and in 2015, his The Pangcah Girl won the First Prize of Taiwan Literary Award.

Killing the Ghost, a historical novel, deals with issues of Taiwanese identities resulting from fifty years of the Japanese occupation and from the iron-fist rule of the KMT after World War II. Gan Yao-ming, against the backdrops of the Kominka Movement (the Japanization of Taiwanese Movement in 1937 during the second Sino-Japan War)and the 228 Incident (the cause of the KMT's enforcement of martial law on Taiwan from 1947 to 1987), depicts the insanity of that era as well as the unfailing vitality of people living on the island of Taiwan, be they post-World War II Mainland Chinese emigres, or the natives formerly colonized by the Japanese.