Christine Zoe Palau is the speechwriter at the Korean Consulate in Los Angeles. She plays accordion, writes theatre reviews for the Noho Arts District, and has recently completed her first novel.<\/i> <\/p>\n
Snow and Shadow<\/i><\/a> – Dorothy Tse, Translated from the Chinese by Nicky Harman, Hong Kong Dorothy Tse\u2019s collection of thirteen stories will force you to experience life in ways you\u2019ve never imagined. While often outlandish, the stories make perfect sense on a metaphysical level. Her paragraphs are paintings that transport you to bizarre places (bartering amputated limbs for sex, why not?). You don\u2019t necessarily want to become a part of these worlds, but you do recognize the truth in them. <\/p>\n You will want to read these stories aloud to hear the rhythm of the language. And that rhythm, no matter how gruesome the image (an elephant-sized fridge filled with bird corpses), will make you feel as if there could be no other way to say what was said. <\/p>\n Absurd, surreal, and morose. Kafka, Gogol, and Cort\u00e1zar might pop into your head. A wife turns into a fish; a father donates his head to his son; and another father can\u2019t distinguish between reality and a cop series he\u2019s obsessed with. Maybe this sounds familiar, but I assure you it\u2019s not. <\/p>\n For all the savage imagery of death and dismembering, the stories are filled with life and longing. The longing for sleep comes up quite a bit. A whole story is devoted to that. In \u201cBed,\u201d the need for proper sleep becomes a compulsive desire. The sleep that\u2019s so coveted in \u201cBed,\u201d and in some of the other stories, seems to be more connected to one\u2019s personal freedom. Dreaming is the only time we\u2019re really free, when we can\u2019t control our thoughts or be controlled. Ultimately it\u2019s the unconscious mind that takes us on these cathartic journeys that distract us from reality, and sometimes even help us transform our realities.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Muted Door\u201d is a story of displacement, desire, and dialectics. It\u2019s also my favorite.<\/p>\n \u201cThe door is constructed in such a way as to conceal the fact that it does not exist. Precisely because entering and departing leaves no trace, it becomes necessary to suggest it by means of this pantomime. Thus all doors are symbolic, and we can only grope our way blindly. Nothing limits us, nothing protects us. Decisions are impossible.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is followed by a stranger, as he\u2019s called, not being able to find the apartment he\u2019s supposed to deliver pizza to. It\u2019s his first day on the job, his first pizza, and the fifty-minute deadline already passed. The stranger is at \u201can experiment, now abandoned, in the history of housing development in City 24,\u201d also known as the Displacement Apartments.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the residents, the apartments are like face-down playing cards on a table top moving around, taking their doors with them in a completely random way. That is to say, when the residents leave their apartments, they have to go through the process of finding them once more, with no rules to follow.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And when they do leave, they bring a suitcase with them so they can camp out in the corridor when they can\u2019t find their way home. <\/p>\n \u201cTheir apartment is as unreachable as the motherland. Some will find themselves pressing a stranger\u2019s doorbell as if longing in this strange land for a chance encounter with a substitute lover, or seeking to make temporary use of a warm bath, soft bedding, and comfort.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s impossible to read Tse\u2019s stories and not think about the political situation in Hong Kong, especially given the themes of metamorphosis, memory and forgetting, and exile that flow throughout this collection.<\/p>\n In an essay for Drunken Boat<\/i> titled \u201cThe Imagination of Collapsible Umbrellas\u201d Tse compares the arrested protestors in Hong Kong with the revolutionaries in the movie Snowpiercer<\/i>, “when the leaders and intellectuals in the train think they have control of the overall structure of \u2018reality\u2019 and believe dictatorship is the best way to ensure human survival in a harsh environment, only those who dare to take a risk can break out of the unimaginative \u2018reality\u2019 and turn an unknown path into a possible way out.”<\/p>\n Which brings me to the final story, \u201cSnow and Shadow,\u201d about, perhaps, the most twisted love triangle ever. Speaking to her serving woman moments after she grafts human flesh onto the face of a deer, the princess, Snow, says, \u201cNo one can achieve real happiness unless they liberate themselves from the castle of destiny.\u201d <\/p>\n This struggle for liberation is at the core of each of Tse\u2019s stories. Anything is possible, and that’s both exciting and terrifying. With Snow and Shadow<\/i>, translator Nicky Harman has earned a place in my heart alongside George Szirtes and Edith Grossman. I will seek out her work, because I know that her translations honor the original by grasping the psychology of the author, the characters and the worlds they inhabit, resulting in the truth\u2014ugly and beautiful\u2014every time. Isn\u2019t that reason enough to win the BTBA<\/span>?<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christine Zoe Palau is the speechwriter at the Korean Consulate in Los Angeles. She plays accordion, writes theatre reviews for the Noho Arts District, and has recently completed her first novel. Snow and Shadow – Dorothy Tse, Translated from the Chinese by Nicky Harman, Hong Kong Muse Magazine Project Dorothy Tse\u2019s collection of thirteen stories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[60346,8026,59836,60636,60646,22646,1646,41496,59826],"class_list":["post-301206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba2015-fiction-longlist","tag-chinese","tag-dorothy-tse","tag-hong-kong","tag-muse-magazine-project","tag-nicky-harman","tag-review","tag-short-stories","tag-snow-and-shadow"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316736,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301206\/revisions\/316736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMuse Magazine Project<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n\u201cI longed for the lights to go out quickly, and the bed to settle into a whirlpool as thick and black as tar so I could sink into a bottomless sleep.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n