The Man with the Compound Eyes: A novel from the Vintage Earth collection

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VINTAGE EARTH- A series of transformative novels with the environment at their heart. 'You must love the land, my children, and ring it in with your love' On the island of Wayo Wayo, every second son must leave on the day he turns fifteen as a sacrifice to the Sea God. Atile'i however is determined to defy destiny and become the first to survive. Across the sea, Alice Shih's life is interrupted when a vast trash vortex comes crashing onto the shore of Taiwan, bringing Atile'i with it. In the aftermath of the catastrophe, Atile'i and Alice retrace her late husband's footsteps into the mountains, hoping to solve the mystery of her son's disappearance. On their journey, memories will be challenged, an unusual bond formed, and a dark secret uncovered that will force Alice to question everything she thought she knew. 'A haunting and evocative tale, beautifully told. I wept at the description of the dying whales and the approaching tsunami... I think this work will be a classic' Hugh Howey, author of Wool VINTAGE EARTH is a series of books that reveals our ever-changing relationship with the environment. These are stories old and young, set in worlds real or imagined, that allow us to explore our connection to the natural world. Transformative, wild, surprising and essential, these novels take on the most urgent story of our times.

Reviews

A haunting and evocative tale, beautifully told. I wept at the description of the dying whales and the approaching tsunami ... I think this work will be a classicHugh Howey, author of WOOL

Frankly, astonishing A wonderful novel which deserves a very wide audienceDavid Barnett, Independent on Sunday

Inventive narrative The depiction of Atileis magical realm and his innocent wonder at this unfamiliar and murky world is imaginative and movingTrisha Andres, Financial Times

Shuttles between ... two realms with a dizzying ease reminiscent of Haruki Murakami, twisting the dreamlike into the curiously credibleTimes Literary Supplement

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 tendernessUrsula Le Guin

Author Bio

Wu Ming-Yi is a Taiwanese writer, painter, designer, photographer, literary professor, butterfly scholar, environmental activist, traveller and blogger. He is the author of the novel Routes in the Dream (2007), as well as a number of non-fiction books and short story collections. The Man with the Compound Eyes is his first novel to be translated into English. Darryl Sterk has translated numerous short stories from Taiwan for The Chinese Pen Quarterly, and now teaches translation in the Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation at National Taiwan University.