The first novel by author and musician Tiunn Ka-siông, The Night Watchers, is a poetic and haunted fresco, weaving magical realism with oral transmission, local legends, and childhood memories. The story takes place in Bourg-Brûlé, a town inspired by the author's native village, and branches out between secrets, local myths, and documentary chronicles, both real and invented. The narrator describes a childhood marked by an oppressive family atmosphere where wandering spirits, minor gods, and politicized specters mingle. Alongside his friend Bí-hui, a disturbing figure who seems to embody the mysterious "night watchman," an obscure guardian deity of dead souls, he explores the uncertain boundaries separating the living and the dead. An entire subterranean memory of Taiwan thus surfaces, in particular that of the White Terror, reread through the prism of rural myths.