No sooner had I finished my recent post about Julien Gracq's 1951 novel The Opposing Shore than tensions flared between our real-life Orsenna and Farghestan in the Pacific: by which I mean Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. This week, the PRC military engaged in an unprecedentedly aggressive set of war games, completely encircling Taiwan in what can only be seen as a dangerous sign of escalating tensions between the countries—if not a threat of something even worse (like a looming invasion).
As you may recall, the mythic nations in Gracq's novel are engaged in a long-simmering conflict in which there are no active hostilities—but neither has peace been officially declared. In this regard, Gracq's fictional premise could be regarded as a stand-in for any number of real-world geopolitical conflicts dating from the twentieth century that have never been formally resolved: the uneasy truce between North and South Korea, say—or, to the point here, the dispute over the political status of Taiwan.