The Man with the Compound Eyes: A Novel
SynopsisPlot
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.
Story
About this book
On the mythical Pacific island of Wayo-Wayo, a young man named Atile'i reaches his 180th full moon and is sent alone onto the open sea as a sacrifice to the Sea God, following the custom of his people. Adrift and close to death, he reaches an unexpected refuge, an enormous floating mass of human garbage, large enough to serve as an island.
Alice teaches literature in Taiwan. After her husband and son vanish, she decides to end her own life, but the collision of the trash island with her stretch of coastline interrupts that plan and wrecks her house. Meeting Atile'i gives her a reason to keep going, and together they try to trace what became of her family. Their exchanges cross a wide gap of language and experience.
Wu Ming-Yi widens the story to include Alice's neighbors and friends, environmentalists from other countries, and the elusive figure named in the title. The book moves between realistic detail and fantasy, keeping ocean pollution, coastal damage, and displaced communities in view. It was the author's first novel to appear in English, and it joins environmental fable with the private matter of family loss.
