Overview

In the mountainous city of Nevers, there lives a professor of literature called Q. He has a dull marriage and a lacklustre 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 tantalizingly springs 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 sinister forces encroaching on his city and the protests spreading across the university that have left his classrooms all but empty. Thrumming with secrets and shape-shifting geographies, Dorothy Tse’s extraordinary debut novel is a boldly inventive exploration of life under repressive conditions.

Full Product Details

9781804270349

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Tse joins the ranks of artists currently remaking the world, from Yoko Tawada to Cesar Aira.' - Joyelle McSweeney, author of Toxicon and Arachne 'By 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 Likes

'Tse joins the ranks of artists currently remaking the world, from Yoko Tawada to Cesar Aira.' - Joyelle McSweeney, author of Toxicon and Arachne 'By 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 Likes 'I 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.' - Madeleine Feeny, The Bookseller

'Dorothy 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 Zed 'Beguilingly 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 Bread 'A magical and potent tale for these tyrannical times.' - NoViolet Bulawayo, author of Glory 'By 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 Likes 'Tse joins the ranks of artists currently remaking the world, from Yoko Tawada to Cesar Aira.' - Joyelle McSweeney, author of Toxicon and Arachne 'I 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.' - Madeleine Feeny, The Bookseller

Author Information

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.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available