An NYRB Classics Original pWhen the pioneering Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind her unpublished masterpiece, iLast Words from Montmartrei. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, iLast Wordsi tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young women--their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu's genre-bending novel is at once a psychological thriller, a sublime romance, and the author's own suicide note. pThe letters which, Qiu tells us, can be read in any order leap between Paris, Taipei, and Tokyo. They display wrenching insights into what it means to live between cultures, languages, and genders--until the genderless character Zo appears, and the narrator's spiritual and physical ide