East Slope Publishing Limited (Muse, Hong Kong)
September 1, 2015
232
A patient escapes from an asylum, to spend his life as the perfect mannequin in a department store display; when living alone is outlawed, a woman who resides quietly with her cat is assigned by bureaucrats to a role in an artificially created "family;" a luckless man transforms himself into a chair so people can, literally, sit on him.
These are just a few of the inhabitants of Hon Lai-chu's stories, where surreal characters struggle to carve out space for freedom and individuality in an absurd world. The Chinese version of The Kite Family won the New Writer's Novella first prize from Taiwan's Unitas Literary Association, was one of 2008's Books of the Year according to Taiwan's China Times, was selected as one of the Top 10 Chinese Novels Worldwide, and was awarded a Translation Grant from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.
The Kite Family tells different kind of stories which have different kind of subjects.
Not my preferred type of cheese this book, appreciation of this book depends on your cultural background and or understanding of the Chinese society and political climate. You either dig it or you do not… I my case: I do not.
What was left for me was the appreciation of the separate stories themselves and not the idea behind it, the real story the author wants to tell.Does this mean this book is bad? No absolutely not!
I simply miss the cultural background.
