Day 6: Book Recommendation- You Are Eating An Orange, You Are Naked by Sheung-King

 

Goodreads Description:

A young translator living in Toronto frequently travels abroad—to Hong Kong, Macau, Prague, Tokyo—often with his unnamed lover. In restaurants and hotel rooms, the couple begin telling folk tales to each other, perhaps as a way to fill the undefined space between them. Theirs is a comic and enigmatic relationship in which emotions are often muted and sometimes masked by verbal play and philosophical questions, and further complicated by the woman’s frequent unexplained disappearances.

You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. is an intimate novel of memory and longing that challenges Western tropes and Orientalism. Embracing the playful surrealism of Haruki Murakami and the atmospheric narratives of filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, Sheung-King’s debut is at once lyrical and punctuated, and wholly unique, and marks the arrival of a bold new voice in Asian-Canadian literature.

Why you should read it

This is just one of those novels that pulls you in and you can feel alongside the characters. I was so in the moment for those relationship conversations and I could really sense the translator's confusion about his partner's behavior. It just gave space to those "unsure" moments most of us have felt while communicating with others in close connection.

I adore Sheung-King's writing and I highly recommend this one.