In December 1941, Japanese troops landed on the northern coast of Borneo and began a brutal three-year, eight-month occupation. Set in a forgotten theater of World War II, The Crossing of the Boars is a gripping magical-realist tale of a multiethnic village fighting for survival.

Opening years after the war, with the Village of the Boars enveloped in wildfire smoke and confronted with a puzzling suicide, Zhang Guixing's novel immerses readers in a tropical society plagued by violence. Once overrun with wild boars, Krokop finds itself overrun with Japanese soldiers, who prove harder to expel. The bloodshed of the initial invasion sparks a protracted guerilla resistance led by such characters as Boar King Chu, Oddball Zhung, Turtle Tsin, Red-Face Guan, Flat-Nose Chiew, and Skinny Shim. As the atrocities of the "devil" invaders mount, the jungle takes its own toll with wildfires, headhunters, crocodile attacks, macaque wars, and visitations by the vampire Pontianak. A phantasmagoria of jungle shadows, yokai demons, and opium hallucinations make the hunters and the hunted alike unable to distinguish friend from foe, human from beast, and self from other.

The Crossing of the Boars is a stylistic masterpiece, a dazzling mix of ecological fantasy and labyrinthine mystery. Celebrated for its linguistic virtuosity reminiscent of Gabriel García Márquez, William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Salman Rushdie, Zhang Guixing's magnum opus is an epic work of historical fiction.

Zhang Guixing ( ) was born in Sarawak, Malaysia, in 1956, and came to Taiwan twenty years later to attend university. His works center on life in the rainforests of Borneo and the challenges faced by ethnic Chinese living in Southeast Asia. His writing is poetic and known for its rhetorical flair and richness. He is a recipient of the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, among other awards.

Christopher Rea is a professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia.

Julie M. Wang is an educator and translator based in Vancouver, Canada.