The Man with the Compound Eyes
  • Published: 3 November 2014
  • ISBN: 9780099575627
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $29.99

The Man with the Compound Eyes

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 Nov 2022
EBook
29 Aug 2013
Paperback
3 Nov 2014
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A Taiwanese Life of Pi

From the author of The Stolen Bicycle - longlisted for the International Man Booker Prize

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.
  • Published: 3 November 2014
  • ISBN: 9780099575627
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Wu Ming-Yi

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.

Praise for The Man with the Compound Eyes

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 Le Guin

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

Inventive narrative… The depiction of Atile’i’s magical realm and his innocent wonder at this unfamiliar and murky world is imaginative and moving

Trisha Andres, Financial Times

Intriguing… An earnest, politically conscious novel... anchored in the gritty mess of what it means to remember and to exist as an individual

Tash Aw, Guardian

Frankly, astonishing… A wonderful novel which deserves a very wide audience

David Barnett, Independent on Sunday

An extraordinary near-future adventure

chosen as one of the '50 Best Winter Reads', Independent

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

Times Literary Supplement

A novel of the near future in which genre boundaries no longer have any meaning... The twists and turns of The Man with the Compound Eyes provide compelling reading. It is safe to say you will read nothing else quite like it

Maureen Kincaid Speller, Interzone

A fascinating genre-bending novel merging fantasy with an important environmental message

Big Issue

A novel anchored in the gritty mess of what it means to remember and to exist as an individual

Tash Aw, Guardian