Taiwanese writer Yeh Shih-tao, who chronicled more than 300 years of the island's literary history and earned fame for his searing portrayals of ordinary Taiwanese, died Thursday in the southern city of Kaohsiung. He was 83.Officials from the Kaohsiung City Cultural Department said Yeh, who had been hospitalized since February, died of intestinal cancer.
Yeh's work includes several short novels focusing on the struggles of Taiwanese and their quests for self-redemption. He is probably best known for "The Chronicle of Taiwanese Literature," a 1987 compilation of more than 300 years of Taiwanese literary history.
Yeh, who was born in 1925, wrote in Japanese when Taiwan was a colony of Japan and switched to Chinese after Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists gained control of the island at the end of World War II.
The author was jailed for three years in the 1950s by Chiang's government for allegedly harboring communist agents.
In 2004 he was appointed a national policy adviser by then President Chen Shui-bian.
Yeh is survived by his wife and two sons.
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