The winner of a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, Owlish is a fantastically eerie debut novel that is also a bold exploration of life under oppressive regimes.
In a city called Nevers, there lives a professor of literature called Q. He has a dull marriage and a lackluster career, but also a scrumptious collection of antique dolls locked away in his cupboard. And soon Q lands his crowning acquisition: a music box ballerina named Aliss who has tantalizingly sprung to life. Guided by his mysterious friend Owlish and inspired by an inexplicably familiar painting, Q embarks on an all-consuming love affair with Aliss, oblivious to the protests spreading across the university that have left his classrooms all but empty.
The mountainous city of Nevers is itself a mercurial character with concrete flesh, glimmering new construction, and “colonial flair.” Having fled there as a child refugee, Q thought he knew the faces of the city and its people, but Nevers is alive with secrets and shape-shifting geographies.
The winner of a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, Owlish is a fantastically eerie debut novel that is also a bold exploration of life under oppressive regimes.
In a city called Nevers, there lives a professor of literature called Q. He has a dull marriage and a lackluster career, but also a scrumptious collection of antique dolls locked away in his cupboard. And soon Q lands his crowning acquisition: a music box ballerina named Aliss who has tantalizingly sprung to life. Guided by his mysterious friend Owlish and inspired by an inexplicably familiar painting, Q embarks on an all-consuming love affair with Aliss, oblivious to the protests spreading across the university that have left his classrooms all but empty.
The mountainous city of Nevers is itself a mercurial character with concrete flesh, glimmering new construction, and “colonial flair.” Having fled there as a child refugee, Q thought he knew the faces of the city and its people, but Nevers is alive with secrets and shape-shifting geographies.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — May 16, 2023 |
| Specifications | 224 pages | 5.5 in x 8.25 in |
| Keywords | fable; |
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
DOROTHY TSE is the author of several short-story collections and has received the Hong Kong Book Prize, Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature, and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award. Her first book to appear in English, Snow and Shadow (translated by Nicky Harman), was longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. She is the co-founder of the literary journal Fleurs des Lettres. |
| Written By |
|
DOROTHY TSE is the author of several short-story collections and has received the Hong Kong Book Prize, Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature, and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award. Her first book to appear in English, Snow and Shadow (translated by Nicky Harman), was longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. She is the co-founder of the literary journal Fleurs des Lettres. |
Through the dark rearview mirror of Tse’s fiction, Hong Kong’s past collides with its future.
” —New York TimesIt is as though [Owlish], with its ellipses and obstructed messages, were depicting the reality-warping effects of an uncanny, constraining force—a force like state censorship.
” —New YorkerWhat’s most evocative about Owlish is its scrupulous recall of the city’s quirks … [Tse] wittily captures a recent crisis moment in Hong Kong, exploring a discombobulating state caught between civilisation and its discontents.
” —GuardianI was blown away by the craft, inventiveness, and humour of Owlish … A frustrated literature professor retreats into a secret inner world in this playful novel set in an alternate Hong Kong: a disquieting tale of revolt and rebellion, denial and self-delusion, and the tricks we perform to keep going in life … Owlish is both a sly subversion of fairytales and a Kafkaesque portrait of life under an oppressive regime.
” —Financial TimesAbsorbing, erotic and at times nightmarish.
” —The GuardianTse combines the banal and the fantastic to terrific effect. Full of striking imagery, Owlish is a vertiginous tale of a people sleepwalking into catastrophe.
” —Financial TimesOwlish moves past allegory and arrives at a place that is more profound.
” —Brooklyn Railfantastical yet utterly absurd … Tse’s novel is ultimately a discussion of British colonialism, oppression and censorship.
” —Stanford DailyA wonderfully imaginative fable that resonates with political critique and protest.
” —KirkusWith consummate skill, Tse builds a strange yet somehow familiar backdrop for her story.
” —Asian Review of BooksBeguilingly eerie, richly textured, the pages of Owlish are drenched in strange beauty and menace. Like all the best fairy tales, it reveals the dark truths that we would rather not look at directly, and does so with a surreal and singular clarity.
” —Sophie Mackintosh, author of Cursed BreadA magical and potent tale for these tyrannical times.
” —NoViolet Bulawayo, author of GloryOwlish is so delightfully creepy, wonderful, and strange—I loved it.
” —Camilla Grudova, author of Children of ParadiseA bold, brilliantly absorbing read. This clever, mercurial portrait of an alternate Hong Kong lingers long after the last page.
” —Irenosen Okojie, author of NudibranchDorothy Tse is a magnificent historian of unreal places. Her sage and serious characters are cast adrift in realities that are neither sage nor serious at all—and possibly impossible. Her parallel worlds and paradoxes brilliantly illuminate our own reality, with all its fictions masquerading as facts (and vice versa). Boundlessly creative, richly philosophical—I loved this book.
” —Joanna Kavenna, author of ZedBy turns playful and melancholy, Dorothy Tse’s tales never fail to mesmerize. They are wonderfully assured, and genuinely strange.
” —Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of LikesTse joins the ranks of artists currently remaking the world, from Yoko Tawada to César Aira.
” —Joyelle McSweeney, author of Toxicon and Arachne