Overview
Jing-nan, owner of the most popular food stand in Taipei's world-famous night market, goes undercover to infiltrate an exploitative processed food factory and uncover the truth about a murdered undocumented immigrant in Ed Lin's big-hearted, eye-opening fifth installment in the fan-favorite Taipei Night Market series
Jing-nan is hauling the trash after a successful evening of hawking Taiwanese delicacies to tourists when he finds a corpse propped up against the dumpsters. The dead man turns out to be Juan Ramos, a Philippine national who had come to Taiwan for a job at a massive ZHD food processing plant. The media immediately seizes on the story--one side bemoaning the plight of migrant workers, the other up in arms about the crime migrant workers are allegedly bringing into Taiwan--but no one seems to know who killed Juan Ramos or why he died.
Jing-nan is haunted by Ramos's story, and by the heartbreak of his family, who arrive in Taipei looking for answers. ZHD has a history of safety violations and activists have a hunch Ramos's death might be part of a cover-up. Meanwhile, Jing-nan's gangster uncle, Big Eye, has his own mysterious, probably illegal, reasons for being concerned about what's going on in ZHD. He pressures Jing-nan into a daring and risky mission: going undercover as a migrant laborer to get a job at the food processing plant and report back about the conditions inside. Jing-nan hopes to find out the truth for the Ramos family, and to save other immigrant lives--but first he has to survive the spy operation.
The Dead Can't Make a Living is at once a rollicking crime novel and a scorchingly timely examination of our global dependence on undocumented immigrant lives and the inhumane labor conditions that underpin our modern conveniences.
Jing-nan is hauling the trash after a successful evening of hawking Taiwanese delicacies to tourists when he finds a corpse propped up against the dumpsters. The dead man turns out to be Juan Ramos, a Philippine national who had come to Taiwan for a job at a massive ZHD food processing plant. The media immediately seizes on the story--one side bemoaning the plight of migrant workers, the other up in arms about the crime migrant workers are allegedly bringing into Taiwan--but no one seems to know who killed Juan Ramos or why he died.
Jing-nan is haunted by Ramos's story, and by the heartbreak of his family, who arrive in Taipei looking for answers. ZHD has a history of safety violations and activists have a hunch Ramos's death might be part of a cover-up. Meanwhile, Jing-nan's gangster uncle, Big Eye, has his own mysterious, probably illegal, reasons for being concerned about what's going on in ZHD. He pressures Jing-nan into a daring and risky mission: going undercover as a migrant laborer to get a job at the food processing plant and report back about the conditions inside. Jing-nan hopes to find out the truth for the Ramos family, and to save other immigrant lives--but first he has to survive the spy operation.
The Dead Can't Make a Living is at once a rollicking crime novel and a scorchingly timely examination of our global dependence on undocumented immigrant lives and the inhumane labor conditions that underpin our modern conveniences.
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