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by Wu Ming-Yi
When a tsunami sends a massive island made entirely of trash crashing into the Taiwanese coast, two very different people - an outcast from a mythical island and a woman on the verge of suicide - are united in ways they never could have imagined. Here is the English-language debut of a new and exciting award-winning voice from Taiwan, who has written an "astonishing" novel (The Independent) that is at once fantasy, reality, and dystopian environmental saga.
Fifteen-year-old Atile'i - a native of Wayo Wayo, an island somewhere in the Pacific - has come of age. Following the custom of his people, he is set adrift as a sacrifice to the Sea God but, unlike those who have gone before him, Atile'i is determined to defy precedent and survive. His chances seem slim, but just as it appears that hope is lost, Atile'i comes across a sprawling trash vortex floating in the ocean and climbs onto it.
Meanwhile, on the east coast of Taiwan, Alice, a college professor, is overcome with grief. Her husband and son are missing, having disappeared while hiking in the mountains near their home. Alice is so distraught that she decides to end her own life. But her plans are interrupted by a violent storm that causes the trash vortex to collide with the Taiwanese coast, bringing Atile'i along with it. Alice and Atile'i subsequently form an unlikely friendship that helps each of them come to terms with what they have lost. Together they set out to uncover the mystery of Alice's lost family, following their footsteps into the mountains. Intertwined with Alice and Atile'i's story are the lives of others affected by the tsunami, from environmentalists to Taiwan's indigenous peoples - and, of course, the mysterious man with the compound eyes.
A work of lyrical beauty that combines magical realism and environmental fable, The Man with the Compound Eyes is an incredible story about the bonds of family, the meaning of love, and the lasting effects of human destruction.
"Starred Review. Offering a heady dose of realism, surrealism, and magic realism, with several shots of allegory, award-winning Chinese author Wu offers a work for "literary fiction" readers, but not in the snobbish sense. It's really for any curious, intelligent reader not tethered to the best sellers lists." - Library Journal
"Ming-Yi attempts to unify these convergent narrative threads with the overarching theme of mounting ecological disaster... but this idea does not extend beyond the simple notion that humans are not living in harmony with nature." - Publishers Weekly
"Astonishing... A wonderful novel which deserves a very wide audience." - The Independent (UK)
"An earnest, politically conscious novel, anchored in ecological concerns and Taiwanese identity... [Wu's] writing occupies the space between hard-edged realism and extravagantly detailed fantasy" - The Guardian (UK)
"The depiction of Atile'i's magical realm and his innocent wonder at this unfamiliar and murky world is imaginative and moving." - Financial Times (UK)
"Wu's rollercoaster of a story is about wilderness, wildness, wonderment, love… I couldn't put it down..." - Taipei Times
"This is a brilliant story... I've been bemoaning of late the lack of omniscient storytellers, and they work best with a whimsical and fantastical narrator like this. I think this work will be a classic. A haunting and evocative tale, beautifully told." - Hugh Howey, author of Wool
"We haven't read anything like this novel. Ever. South America gave us magical realism - what is Taiwan giving us? A new way of telling our new reality, beautiful, entertaining, frightening, preposterous, true. Completely unsentimental but never brutal, Wu Ming-Yi treats human vulnerability and the world's vulnerability with fearless tenderness." - Ursula K. Le Guin
This information about The Man with the Compound Eyes was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Wu Ming-Yi was born in 1971 in Taiwan, where he still lives. A writer, artist, professor, and environmental activist, he has been teaching literature and creative writing at National Dong Hwa University since 2000 and is now a professor in the Department of Chinese. Wu is the author of two books of nature writing, the second of which, The Way of Butterflies, was awarded the China Times Open Book Award in 2003. His debut novel, Routes in the Dream, was named one of the ten best Chinese-language novels of the year by Asian Weekly magazine. The Man with the Compound Eyes is his first book to be translated into English.
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