Novelist Lee Yung-ping (李永平)/ file photo

Taipei, Sept. 22 (CNA) Novelist Lee Yung-ping (李永平), a winner of the 19th National Awards of Art in 2016, died Friday aged 70 in Tamsui, New Taipei, Wenhsun magazine reported that day.

Lee succumbed to multiple organ failure caused by sepsis at Mackay Memorial Hospital's Tamsui branch, the magazine said.

Lee was born in 1947 in Sarawak, now a state of Malaysia, and first came to Taiwan in 1967 as a student at National Taiwan University's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.

After earning his master's and doctoral degrees in comparative literature in the United States, Lee returned to Taiwan in 1982 and began to teach at various local universities, including National Sun Yat-sen University, Soochow University and National Dong Hwa University.

He had published more than 30 novels and short stories since 1966, which won him several literature awards.

In 2016, he was presented with a National Award of Art in recognition of his contribution to Taiwanese literature.

Lee, who renounced his Malaysian citizenship in 1987, had described himself as a "100 percent Taiwanese and Taiwan-trained novelist," according to Wenhsun magazine.

He began writing his first novel in the wuxia genre in 2016 but failed to complete the work before his death, the magazine said.

(By Chiang Pei-ling and Y.F. Low)
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