Author: Wu Ming Yi
Publishing Date:
Publisher: Text Publishing
Page Count: 416 pages
Source: Netgalley for review
Translated by Darryl Sterk
On a quest to explain how and why his father mysteriously disappeared twenty years ago, a writer embarks on an epic journey in search of a stolen bicycle and soon finds himself immersed in the strangely overlapping histories of the Japanese military during World War II, Lin Wang, the oldest elephant who ever lived, and the secret world of antique bicycle collectors in Taiwan. The result is a surprising and moving meditation on memory, loss, and the bonds of family.
Award-winning novelist Wu Ming-Yi is regarded in Taiwan as the leading writer of his generation. His work, noted for its depth, complexity and vividly observed natural detail, has been compared to that of distinguished writers as diverse as Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, W.G. Sebald, David Mitchell and Yann Martel.
Translated by Darryl Sterk
On a quest to explain how and why his father mysteriously disappeared twenty years ago, a writer embarks on an epic journey in search of a stolen bicycle and soon finds himself immersed in the strangely overlapping histories of the Japanese military during World War II, Lin Wang, the oldest elephant who ever lived, and the secret world of antique bicycle collectors in Taiwan. The result is a surprising and moving meditation on memory, loss, and the bonds of family.
Award-winning novelist Wu Ming-Yi is regarded in Taiwan as the leading writer of his generation. His work, noted for its depth, complexity and vividly observed natural detail, has been compared to that of distinguished writers as diverse as Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, W.G. Sebald, David Mitchell and Yann Martel.
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MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK:
The Stolen bicycle is a great book. It was wonderful and fascinating. Often times bicycles do not play a major role in a book but this proves that they need to. This book shares lots of information about Taiwan, even though it is indirectly doing so. I have to admit my knowledge about Taiwan is extremely limited so this book gave me a good glimpse into the culture and people.
I was unaware about Taiwan, its subservience to Japan in the years up to and during WWII. I also didn’t realize how diverse Taiwan was in terms of its citizens and languages spoken.
I am an avid bicycle lover. I enjoyed reading a small portion of the history of bicycles in Taiwan. There were many stories of stolen bicycles.
I also enjoyed hearing about the elephants in the zoo’s and how they were used to carry supplies for Japanese troops during WWII. Although the elephant stories were quite sad and made me feel horrible about the treatment of them. I just found it sad but extremely fascinating.
The characters in this book are interesting and seem to flow off the page. They aren’t big or grandiose they just sort of seem like real people you may know in life. They were used to help covey the history of Taiwan which I thought was a very clever thing for the author to do.
Disclaimer: I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest and unbiased review. All thoughts are my own.
A LITTLE ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Writer, painter, designer, photographer, literary professor, butterfly scholar, environmental activist, traveler and blogger rolled into one, Wu Ming-Yi is very much a modern Renaissance Man. Over the last decade, he has produced an impressive body of work, especially with his fiction and nature writing.
Wu Ming-Yi (b.1971) studied advertising at Fu-Jen Catholic University and has a PhD in Chinese Literature from National Central University. He has been teaching literature and creative writing at Dong Hwa University since 2000 and is now Professor of the Department of Chinese.
Wu’s literary reputation was first established by his nature writing. In THE BOOK OF LOST BUTTERFLIES (2000) and THE WAY OF BUTTERFLIES (2003), he chronicles his lifelong fascination with this beautiful creature and contemplates the invisible bond between man and nature. He wrote, designed, and provided drawings and photographs for the books, as if crafting works of art. Both books made the “Best of the Year” lists, with THE WAY OF BUTTERFLIES winning China Times’ Open Book Award and being chosen as one of the ten most influential books by Kingstore Bookstore.
In 2006, juggling academic life and the need for a period of uninterrupted time for his writing and traveling, Wu decided to resign from his teaching post. This is unheard of in a country where almost no one can make a living writing full-time and many would fight for a stable teaching job. In the end, Dong Hwa University gave Wu a year of sabbatical leave – they didn't want to lose him.
A year later, Wu published two books: his third collection of nature writing, SO MUCH WATER SO CLOSE TO HOME, and his debut novel, ROUTES IN THE DREAM. DREAM re-imagines Taiwan’s complicated history as a Japanese colony and examines the relationship between fathers and sons, memory and dreams. Hailed as a groundbreaking work of literary historical fiction, it was nominated for every major award and was chosen as one of the ten best Chinese-language novels of the year by Asian Weekly magazine (along with Ai Mi’s Hawthorn Tree Forever, Liu Zhenyun’s My Name Is Liu Yuejin, and Dai Sijie’s Once on a Moonless Night) . Wu was the only Taiwanese author on the list.
It is his eco-fantasy novel THE MAN WITH THE COMPOUND EYES (2011), however, that has gained Wu international recognition, with major English and French translations appearing in 2013 and 2014. A “Taiwanese Life of Pi”, it is an ambitious exploration of Taiwan's island identity, the cost of environmental degradation, and how humans make sense of the world around them, at once poetic, philosophical and far-reaching. It has already caught the attention of major writers in the genre such as Ursula K. Le Guin.
Source: Goodreads
