The Stolen Bicycle

Author(s): Wu Ming-Yi; Darryl Sterk (Translator)

MBIP 2018

Longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. A writer embarks on an epic quest in search of his missing father's stolen bicycle and soon finds himself ensnared in the strangely intertwined stories of Lin Wang, the oldest elephant who ever lived, the soldiers who fought in the jungles of South-East Asia during World War II, and the secret world of butterfly handicraft makers in Taiwan. The result is both a majestic historical novel and an intimate meditation on memory, family and home. Wu's writing has been compared to that of Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, W.G. Sebald and Yann Martel.

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* Author will be a guest of a major Australian writers festival in 2017 * Extensive review coverage in major newspapers * Widespread review coverage in the literary press * Interviews with Chinese and Taiwanese special interest outlets e.g. SBS Chinese Radio

Winner of Taiwan Literary Award, Taiwan, 2015 and China Times Open Book Award (Six-time winner, including 2015), Taiwan and Eslite Bookseller Award for Author of The Year, Taiwan, 2015 and Publishers Weekly International Hot Book Properties 2015.

`A profoundly moving novel, such is the power of words and depth of feeling by Taiwanese author Wu Ming-Yi...He turns events into linguistic gold with his poetic, dreamlike language.' * Good Reading * `The novel, inspired by his love for bicycles and Taiwanese history, brings readers back to a simpler time when life moved more slowly and people spent more time face-to-face with friends and neighbors. Riding a bike allowed people to appreciate and digest the details of the world around them.' * Taipei Times * `A work of astonishing energy, in which Wu beautifully touches on loss, life and death, fate and destiny, establishing emotional connections between memory and objects, and between the natural world and war...a novel that provides comfort and reconciliation from a wounded past.' * Thinking Taiwan * `Offering a heady dose of realism, surrealism, and magic realism, with several shots of allegory, award-winning Chinese author Wu [Ming-Yi] offers a work for `literary fiction' readers, but not in the snobbish sense. It's really for any curious, intelligent reader.' -- Library Journal (starred review) on The Man with the Compound Eyes `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.' * FullStop on The Man with the Compound Eyes * `[Ming-Yi's] rollercoaster of a story is about wilderness, wildness, wonderment, love...[The Man with the Compound Eyes includes] perhaps the best writing to ever come out of a Taiwan novel.' * Taipei Times on The Man with the Compound Eyes * `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 on The Man with the Compound Eyes `An entrancing, multi-faceted elegy...[Ming-Yi writes with] a poet's approach...Full of painful, wonderful beauty.' * The Rumpus * `Rich, dense and dripping with life. The book sings in the key of fable, but with the timbre of reality.' -- Charles Yu on The Man with the Compound Eyes `[Ming-Yi is] reminiscent of Haruki Murakami, twisting the dreamlike into the curiously credible.' -- Times Literary Supplement (London) on The Man with the Compound Eyes `Imaginative and moving.' -- Financial Times on The Man with the Compound Eyes `An earnest, politically conscious novel, anchored in ecological concerns and Taiwanese identity...Beyond the book's ecological and scientific attributes, you can see a deft novelist's hand at work.' -- Tash Aw on The Man with the Compound Eyes `Astonishing...A wonderful novel.' -- The Independent (London) on The Man with the Compound Eyes 'Lyrical, haunting...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 on The Man with the Compound Eyes "A striking book...It is science fiction...in the way that the best Margaret Atwood books are science fiction...I couldn't put it down." -- Jason Sheehan on The Man with the Compound Eyes `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...Wu Ming-Yi treats human vulnerability and the world's vulnerability with fearless tenderness.' -- Ursula K. Le Guin on The Man with the Compound Eyes `Brilliant...A haunting and evocative tale, beautifully told.' -- Hugh Howey on The Man with the Compound Eyes

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.

General Fields

  • : 9781925498554
  • : Text Publishing Company
  • : 0.51
  • : July 2017
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : Australia
  • : August 2017
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Wu Ming-Yi; Darryl Sterk (Translator)
  • : 416
  • : 895.136
  • : English
  • : 917
  • : Paperback