Whampoa Military Academy was China's first modern military institution. For decades the "Spirit of Whampoa" was invoked as the highest praise to all Chinese soldiers who guarded their nation heroically. But of all the battles these soldiers have fought, the most challenging one was the civil war that resulted in the "great divide" of China in the mid-twentieth century. In 1949 the Communists exiled a million soldiers and their families to compounds in Taiwan and cut off communication with mainland China for forty years. The Last of the Whampoa Breed tells the stories of the exiles written by their descendants, many of whom have become Taiwan's most important authors. The book is an important addition to the vastly underrepresented literature of Taiwan in translation and sheds light on the complex relationship between Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. Western readers will not at first recognize the experiences of these soldiers who were severed from a traditional past only to face unfulfilled promises and uncertain futures. Many of the exiles were doomed to live and die homeless and loveless. Yet these life stories reveal a magnanimous, natural dignity that has transcended prolonged mental suffering. "I Wanted to Go to War" describes the sadly ineffectual, even comic attempts to "recapture the mainland." The old soldier in "Tale of Two Strangers" asks to have his ashes scattered over both the land of his dreams and the island that has sheltered him for forty years. Some of the stories recount efforts to make peace with life in Taiwan, as in "Valley of Hesitation," and the second generation's struggles to find a place in the native island society as in "The Vanishing Ball" and "In Remembrance of My Buddies from the Military Compound." Narrating the homeland remembered and the homeland in reality, the stories in this book affirm that "we shall not let history be burned to mere ashes."

齊邦媛

武漢大學外文系畢業、美國印地安那大學研究。曾任國立台灣大學外文系助教，並任國立中興大學外文系主任。民國七十七年從台灣大學外文系教授任內退休，為國立台灣大學外文系名譽教授。曾任美國聖瑪麗學院，舊金山加州大學訪問教授，德國柏林自由大學客座教授，中華民國筆會英文專刊（The Chinese Pen）總編輯。編有《中國現代文學選集》詩、散文、小說卷三冊，《吳魯芹散文選》，並主編《中國現代文學選集》英譯本上、下冊，《中華現代文學大系》小說卷五冊，另有英文評論譯述多種。個人專論包括：《千年之淚》、《霧漸漸散的時候》。

王德威

國立台灣大學外文系畢業，美國威斯康辛大學麥迪遜校區比較文學博士，曾任教於台灣大學及美國哈佛大學，現任哥倫比亞大學東亞系及比較文學研究所丁龍講座教授。著有《從劉鶚到王禎和：中國現代寫實小說散論》、《眾聲喧嘩：三Ｏ與八Ｏ年代的中國小說》、《閱讀當代小說：台灣、大陸、香港、海外》、Fictional Realism in 20th-Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen、《小說中國：晚清到當代的中文小說》、《想像中國的方法：歷史．小說．敘事》、《如何現代，怎樣文學？：十九、二十世紀中文小說新論》、《眾聲喧嘩以後：點評當代中文小說》、《跨世紀風華：當代小說20家》、《現代中國小說十講》、《被壓抑的現代性：晚清小說新論》、《歷史與怪獸》、The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in 20th Century China等書。