Alice saves him and they tell each other their stories. Atile’i remembers the words of an Earth Sage who says if you encounter anything you aren’t able to understand, you should roar “with the strength that lies beside your beating heart and you will speak with the voice of your true self and even evil spirits will flee.” Atile’i tries to roar, but it’s too painful. Shortly after that, she sees Atile’i trapped under rocks and earth. So many they no longer counted.” Alice’s kitten disappears and she is searching for it when a cloud of butterflies rises up and she hears the sound of a muntjac. Shortly before she meets Atile’i, Alice is thinking: “Bad signs.

She is grieving the loss of her husband Thom, a Danish man who took to mountain climbing after coming to Taiwan, and her son Toto. Meanwhile, another storyline follows Alice Shih, a writer and college faculty member who is contemplating suicide. He is caught up in a current, and a giant Trash Vortex (a floating trash mountain that the government promises to do something about, but doesn’t) sweeps him into the east coast of Taiwan. He is a strong swimmer and plans to survive. Atile’i is one of Wayo Wayo’s second sons sent to sea. The frequency of phrases with double meanings makes the translated text strikingly unstable-like sailing on a strange sea.

They cannot bring more than 10 days’ worth of water and they are “not allowed to look back.” This latter description, like many of the phrases in the novel, has both a literal and a metaphoric meaning.

Deer morph into goats, for example, and as they age, islanders grow “tall like trees” and stick “out their organs of increase like flowers.” Everyone on the island is “skilled at telling diverse stories of the sea.” Ecological events, described in a mystical and surreal way, create the texture of the novel.Īll the second sons of Wayo Wayo are sent to sea permanently when they reach their one hundred and eightieth full moon. Wu renders the island of Wayo Wayo-its flora, fauna, landscape and customs-in a richly poetic style that creates a special brand of magic realism. One story, about the ritual loss of children, revolves around Atile’i, an Aboriginal teenager who lives on an imaginary, undiscovered island in the South Pacific called Wayo Wayo. The loss of children provides the starting point for both of the major storylines in Wu Ming-Yi’s The Man With the Compound Eyes.

The man with the compound eyes