The Kite Family
SynopsisPlot
A patient escapes from an asylum, to spend his life as the perfect mannequin in a department store display; when living alone is outlawed, a woman who resides quietly with her cat is assigned by bureaucrats to a role in an artificially created "family;" a luckless man transforms himself into a chair so people can, literally, sit on him. These are just a few of the inhabitants of Hon Lai-chu's stories, where surreal characters struggle to carve out space for freedom and individuality in an absurd world.
Story
About this book
The Kite Family is a collection of stories by Hong Kong writer Hon Lai-chu. Each tale unfolds in a world governed by absurd rules and quiet desperation. In one, a patient leaves an asylum only to stand motionless as a mannequin in a department store window. In another, living alone is declared illegal, and a woman who shares her apartment with her cat is assigned by officials to join a manufactured household. A man, tired of his lack of fortune, turns himself into a chair so that others may literally sit on him. The scenarios are strange, but the characters inhabit them with a flat, matter-of-fact composure that makes the strangeness feel ordinary.
Hon Lai-chu uses surreal premises to examine how people negotiate freedom and individuality when the structures around them leave little room for either. The stories sit at the border between fable and social observation, pressing everyday frustrations into exaggerated shapes. Bureaucracy, loneliness, and the pressure to fit a designated role run through the collection as recurring concerns.
The book received the New Writer's Novella first prize from Taiwan's Unitas Literary Association and was named one of 2008's Books of the Year by Taiwan's China Times. It was also selected among the Top 10 Chinese Novels Worldwide.
