Batshit Seven

De: Sheung-King

Narrado por: Derek Kwan

From Governor General's Award-nominated author Sheung-King comes a novel about a millennial living through the Hong Kong protests, as he struggles to make sense of modern life and the parts of himself that just won’t gel.

Glen Wu (aka Glue) couldn’t care less about his job. He’s returned to Hong Kong, the city he grew up in, and he’s teaching ESL, just to placate his parents. But he shows up hungover to class, barely stays awake, and prefers to spend his time smoking up until dawn breaks.

As he watches the city he loves fall—the protests, the brutal arrests—life continues around him. So he drinks more, picks more fights with his drug dealer friend, thinks loftier thoughts about the post-colonial condition and Frantz Fanon. The very little he does care about: his sister, who deals with Hong Kong’s demise by getting engaged to a rich immigration consultant; his on-and-off-again relationship with a woman who steals things from him; and memories of someone he once met in Canada....

When the government tightens its grip, language starts to lose all meaning for Glue, and he finds himself pulled into an unsettling venture, ultimately culminating in an act of violence.

Inventive and utterly irresistible, Sheung-King’s ingenious novel encapsulates the anxieties and apathies of the millennial experience. Batshit Seven is an ode to a beloved city, an indictment of the cycles of imperialism, and a reminder of the beautiful things left under the hype of commodified living.

©2024 Sheung-King (P)2024 Penguin Canada

Reseñas de la Crítica

“[Sheung-King] presents [Glue’s] story with the restrained force of an ethnographic study. The result is . . . incredibly powerful, rendering Batshit Seven a highly unusual, highly effective examination of both contemporary society and the quest for identity.”
—Toronto Star

"Glen Wu has returned to Hong Kong to teach English, even as China tightens its grip on the city in a new form of colonialism. Governor General’s Literary Award–nominated Sheung-King weaves a colourful, inventive tale about a disaffected millennial struggling to understand the world and his own identity during a time of change." —Quill & Quire

"Glue has an intricate understanding of what ails him and his homeland of Hong Kong, but he's paralyzed by his status as a transnational, neither here nor there. This grimly hilarious book asks if imperialism does this to us by accident, or on purpose—but also, it doesn't matter. An astonishingly unflinching account of the spiritual wasteland where 'global' 'citizens' live; how it feels to have your personhood hollowed out by market forces, empire, and migration." —Thea Lim, author of An Ocean of Minutes