Description: "Astonishing. . . . A wonderful novel which deserves a very wide audience." -- The Independent (London) "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 K. Le Guin "An earnest, politically conscious novel, anchored in ecological concerns and Taiwanese identity. . . . [Wu''s] writing occupies the space between hard-edged realism and extravagantly detailed fantasy. . . . There may be walking trees, miraculous butterflies and deer that morph into goats, but this is a novel anchored in the gritty mess of what it means to remember and to exist as an individual. . . . Beyond the book''s ecological and scientific attributes, you can see a deft novelist''s hand at work." --Tash Aw, The Guardian "A universal, yet unique, tale of love and loss. . . . The Man with the Compound Eyes defies categorization. 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. . . . [A work of] lyrical, haunting beauty." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "A striking book. . . . [Wu''s] characters are not just full and round but, in their every small detail and stray thought, seem to stretch their own skins, swollen with a complex humanity. . . . It is science fiction . . . in the way that the best Margaret Atwood books are science fiction. . . .At the same time, it''s [also] in the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez''s magic realism. . . .I read it on the train, on my couch, standing on the street outside a beer garden with a couple of liters already in me and in my car while I drove. . . . I couldn''t put it down. . . . I missed the story when I wasn''t living inside it. Because as distant and foreign as it was . . . The Man with the Compound Eyes felt like home."--Jason Sheehan, NPR "The depiction of Atile''i''s magical realm and his innocent wonder at this unfamiliar and murky world is imaginative and moving." -- Financial Times "I''m fascinated by The Man with the Compound Eyes , which is rich, dense and dripping with life. 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 "Wu''s rollercoaster of a story is about wilderness, wildness, wonderment, love. . . . I couldn''t put it down, and over the course of several days I felt that I had ventured into a new, uncharted territory concocted by a Taipei visionary. Part South American magical realism, part Margaret Atwood rollercoaster of the imagination. . . . [ The Man with the Compound Eyes includes] perhaps the best writing to ever come out of a Taiwan novel. . . . The English translation . . . is superb and sensitively captures the nuances of Taiwan''s Aboriginal cultures and languages." -- Taipei Times "This is a brilliant story. I wept at the description of the dying whales and the approaching tsunami. I''ve been bemoaning of late the lack of omniscient storytellers, and they work best with a whimsical and fantastical narrator like this. I think this work will be a classic. A haunting and evocative tale, beautifully told." --Hugh Howey, author of Wool "Beautifully written and beautifully translated. . . . [Ming-Yi] 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. . . . Lyric, simple, soft, the story crests and recedes and comes back again." -- The Bloomington Sun-Current "A gift. . . . 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 [the] humans and the animals and plants he describes with such fidelity and with such inspiring belief in the reality of their wisdom and power."-- FullStop "[ The Man with the Compound Eyes ] has charm. . . adventure, horror, awe, and a heavy proenvironmental theme. . . . 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. It''s really for any curious, intelligent reader not tethered to the best sellers lists." -- Library Journal (starred review) From the Hardcover edition.

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