![]() ![]() It's about a giant trash vortex - an island of garbage drifting around the Pacific ocean - and what happens when it crashes into the east coast of Taiwan. It is a story about a middle-aged professor and writer who wants to die, and a young man exiled from an imaginary South Pacific island. The Man with the Compound Eyes is a translation, ably done by Darryl Sterk. When it is, in every way a book can be, alien. ![]() And when the book wasn't even written in your language. Like flying cross-country under the influence of pharmaceutical grade narcotics.īut to land again amid the pages, to look around and to recognize the place you've come to as easily as you do your own bedroom to be able to curl into the pulp and ink and know this invented place in every smell, every sound - that's magic.Įspecially when you've never been to Taiwan.Įspecially when this Taiwan - the magical, spirit-infested Taiwan of Wu Ming-Yi's The Man with the Compound Eyes - isn't even the real Taiwan. I mean, that's the soft sell, right? The promise, rarely fulfilled, of every story: That it will, for a moment or an hour, lift you effortlessly from where you are and deposit you somewhere completely elsewhere. It is so rare to find yourself at home in any book. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Man With the Compound Eyes Author Wu Ming-yi ![]()
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