It's really for any curious, intelligent reader.' - Library Journal (starred review), 'Astonishing. Ming-Yi is a naturalist as well as a storyteller, and it is perhaps his greatest achievement that this novel creates a sense of solidarity not only between his human characters, but also between humans and the animals and plants he describes with such fidelity.' - FullStop 'Offering a heady dose of realism, surrealism, and magic realism, with several shots of allegory, award-winning Chinese author Wu offers a work for 'literary fiction' readers, but not in the snobbish sense.

perhaps the best writing to ever come out of a Taiwan novel.' - Taipei Times 'A gift. Lyric, simple, soft, the story crests and recedes and comes back again.' - The Bloomington Sun-Current ' rollercoaster of a story is about wilderness, wildness, wonderment, love. guides us to see the entirety of experience as bumping flotsam in an unending ocean of life colliding and making a mess of things or making something new. Full of painful, wonderful beauty.' - The Rumpus 'Beautifully written and beautifully translated. The book sings in the key of fable, but with the timbre of reality.' -Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Fictional Universe 'An entrancing, multi-faceted elegy. Beyond the book's ecological and scientific attributes, you can see a deft novelist's hand at work.' -Tash Aw, The Guardian (London) 'Imaginative and moving.' - Financial Times ' reminiscent of Haruki Murakami, twisting the dreamlike into the curiously credible.' - Times Literary Supplement (London) 'Rich, dense and dripping with life. A wonderful novel.' - The Independent (London) 'An earnest, politically conscious novel, anchored in ecological concerns and Taiwanese identity. A heady mix of science fiction, fantasy, environmental fable and magical realism, the author had to create a genre entirely new for this singular, captivating book.' - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 'Astonishing. I couldn't put it down.' -Jason Sheehan, NPR 'Lyrical, haunting. in the way that the best Margaret Atwood books are science fiction. Wu Ming-Yi treats human vulnerability and the world's vulnerability with fearless tenderness.' -Ursula K. South America gave us magical realism-what is Taiwan giving us? A new way of telling our new reality, beautiful, entertaining, frightening, preposterous, true. A haunting and evocative tale, beautifully told.' -Hugh Howey, author of Wool 'We haven't read anything like this novel.

The man with the compound eyes