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A Novel
by Susan Barker
Book Reviewed by:An original novel about a Beijing taxi driver whose past incarnations over one thousand years haunt him through searing letters sent by his mysterious soulmate.
Hailed as "China's Midnight's Children" (The Independent) this "brilliant, mind-expanding, and wildly original novel" (Chris Cleave) about a Beijing taxi driver whose past incarnations over one thousand years haunt him through searing letters sent by his mysterious soulmate.
Who are you? you must be wondering. I am your soulmate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of sixteen million in search of you.
So begins the first letter that falls into Wang's lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of Wang's previous lives—from escaping a marriage to a spirit bride, to being a slave on the run from Genghis Khan, to living as a fisherman during the Opium Wars, and being a teenager on the Red Guard during the cultural revolution—bound to his mysterious "soulmate," spanning one thousand years of betrayal and intrigue.
As the letters continue to appear seemingly out of thin air, Wang becomes convinced that someone is watching him—someone who claims to have known him for over one thousand years. And with each letter, Wang feels the watcher growing closer and closer…
Seamlessly weaving Chinese folklore, history, and literary classics, The Incarnations is a taut and gripping novel that sheds light on the cyclical nature of history as it hints that the past is never truly settled.
Chapter 1
The First Letter
Every night I wake from dreaming. Memory squeezing the trigger of my heart and blood surging through my veins.
The dreams go into a journal. Cold sweat on my skin, adrenaline in my blood, I illuminate my cement room with the 40-watt bulb hanging overhead and, huddled under blankets, flip open my notebook and spill ink across the feint-ruled page. Capturing the ephemera of dreams, before they fade from memory.
I dream of teenage girls, parading the Ox Demons and Snake Ghosts around the running tracks behind our school. I dream of the tall dunce hats on our former teachers' ink-smeared heads, the placards around their necks. Down with Headteacher Yang! Down with Black Gangster Zhao! I dream of Teacher Wu obeying our orders to slap Headteacher Yang, to the riotous cheers of the mob.
I dream that we stagger on hunger-weakened limbs through the Gobi as the Mongols drive us forth with lashing whips. I dream of razor-beaked birds swooping at our heads, ...
Barker provides a dynamic reminder that in books, we can be any character we want to be, and know each of them intimately, even across lifetimes...continued
Full Review
(597 words)
(Reviewed by Rory L. Aronsky).
Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master's Son (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2013)
A thrilling journey through a thousand years of obsession and betrayal and a vivid tapestry of the individual's struggle against the tyranny of history, this is the most extraordinary work of imagination you'll read all year. Anna Hope, author of Wake
What a ferociously talented writer Susan Barker is. The Incarnations is a hallucinatory ride. Highly recommended Chris Cleave, author of Little Bee
A brilliant, mind-expanding and wildly original novel. John Boyne
An extraordinary novel. Erudite, intriguing and compulsively readable, The Incarnations takes the reader on an intimate and mesmerizing journey through Chinese history. Susan Barker, a born story-teller, has written one of the most remarkable novels of recent years.Susan Barker's The Incarnations explores the five lives of one man who, in his present life, is a taxi driver in Beijing. The highest-profile example of reincarnation is that of the Dalai Lamas in Tibet – 14 in all, so far. The Dalai Lamas come from the Yellow Hat Sect of Tibetan Buddhists, which was founded in the late 14th century, devoting itself to restoring discipline in a monastic life. They believe that each Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of the original.
Gedun Drupa was the first Dalai Lama, born in 1391. However, the title of Dalai Lama was not adopted until the 1570s, so Drupa and his successor, Gedun Gyatso, were considered abbots in their lifetimes. Sonam Gyatso, the third Dalai Lama, was the first to hold the title, ...
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