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, yōkai 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 is one of the most innovative contemporary authors writing in Chinese. His several acclaimed novels, set in the rainforests of his native Borneo, include My South Seas Sleeping Beauty: A Tale of Memory and Longing (2007) and Elephant Herd: A Novel (2025), also published in English translation by Columbia University Press.

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.