Owlish is a strange, magical-realistic exploration of shifting society through a man's midlife crisis. The professor at the heart of the story develops an obsession with a life size doll who he takes to a secret place to live out his fantasies with. As their interactions progress, the doll seems to be getting more and more life-like. Coppélia meets Murakami.

A poignant, quiet and clever novel. Is there anything that Fitzcarraldo publish that isn't incredible? As far as I can tell so far the answer to that question is no. I'm not even sure what genre I would put this book into, it feels almost out of this world yet it isn't fantasy. It's just beautiful and strange. The characters, although not all likeable, are really interesting and I was fascinated by them all.

A very clever book.

Unfortunately this one wasn’t for me. I enjoyed that it discusses China’s takeover of Hong Kong, as I’ve never read anything else discussing this in terms of fiction, but I found that I was unable to keep track of a lot of what was going on towards the end. Perhaps it’s my dislike of dolls but unfortunately I’m not sure if I’d recommend this one to others.

I very much appreciate that this is the first book-length translated work of fiction that deals with the 2019 pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. I enjoyed Natasha Bruce’s translated prose, the allegory to Hong Kong-China relations, and the magical realist elements. But despite that, I think the story is somewhat incoherent, probably because Dorothy Tze started writing this novel back in 2011/2012, put it aside for a few years, and then resumed in 2019. Most of the story is about the midlife crisis and extramarital affair of a professor with virility issues. There is something inexplicably compelling in the narrative even though usually I care nothing about narcissistic men and their egos. The student protests are spliced in much later in the novel, and they don't fit very well with the rest of the book. As a few of my Hongkonger friends commented, this part feels like a thinly veiled and not fully processed allusion to the events that happened in 2019, with an effect that is not raw but somewhat uncritical and unoriginal. It is for this that I take off one star.

That said, it was a compelling read over all and I am happy to see more Hong Kong literature in translation. Thank you so much for the ARC.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one level it intrigued and entertained me but on the other it mystified me and I felt that much of the time I just wasn’t getting it. It takes place in the mountainous, formerly colonised, city of Nevers, a stand-in for Hong Kong, and features Professor Q, a disenchanted teacher of literature in a dull marriage who escapes into a fantasy world of antique dolls. This results in an all-consuming love affair with a life-sized ballerina called Aliss. Professor Q is oblivious of what’s happening around him in the wider world as he attempts to escape it. I wasn’t clear whether Aliss is supposed to symbolise anything or is just a vehicle for Q’s fantasies, but in any case I found the doll business a bit distasteful. The political aspects of the book are clearer, with the exploration of life under a totalitarian regime and China’s take-over of Hong Kong, but overall the mix of dream and reality was destabilising, and I’m sure many references simply passed me by. A weird little book, for sure, but one which lingers with me.

This book is a weird little gem, and I loved how it is almost in on the joke itself, realising how absurd and bizarre it is throughout.

Professor Q, our oblivious and confused main character, tries and fails to understand the world around him, an alternative society where we have sights such as sexualised dancing dolls, protests and the Kafkaesque drudgery of trying to get tenure.

It is a real oddball of a book, with some unforgettable and funny moments throughout.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

A tale of love, isolation, loss, sanity and many other important topics this was a lovely quick read that i fell completely into. Very different to many novels I’ve read but I believe that was its charm. It was a great read and easy to get completely lost in. I really enjoyed this!

The writing flows beautifully and the translation does not feel forced or too heavy. The book started out as a very promising tale. Still, I slowly lost interest because of the haze of symbolism and references that I could not grasp, not being particularly knowledgeable in Asian history/literature. I, unfortunately, could not find the strength to finish it (it was archived anyway), but I can see that for someone else this would play out differently. I do recommend it for fans of absurdist fantasy with some background knowledge.

Reading Owlish was like living through a fever dream - I was never sure what was "real" and what was imagined by the characters because it all seemed so weird. I think the book also had something political to say about Hong Kong, but I'm not sure really what that was (student protests?) because my knowledge in that area is not great.

I'm really glad I was given the opportunity to read this book, but I don't think I understood it fully!

Owlish – Dorothy Tse (translated from Chinese by Natascha Bruce)

Love is blind, as the saying goes. Although, in the case of Professor Q, it would be more accurate to say that love had rearranged his vision.

The city of Nevers, a small city state once run by the Valerian Empire but now back in the hands of the Ksana “motherland”, merely an empire with a different hue. The mountains of the island help to fragrantly harbour a city of skyscrapers, with laser light shows every night illuminating the buildings.

Professor Q is a literature professor, well-versed in Valerian and so highly regarded. His life is very middle-class, settled and dull with a wife in the civil service and a job with little chance of progression. The Professor has a secret, however – an erotic penchant for female dolls and other lifeless figurines, one that leads him towards the life-size porcelain ballerina Aliss, where things turn strange, a parallel shadow world emerging which has repercussions on the real world.

I think that I enjoyed this more than some early reviewers, but I also think it’s imperfect. I lived in Hong Kong for 2 years, including during the 2014 protests that were the catalyst for this book, so there were references that I think I grasped and enjoyed. This is a very political novel hidden in a dark fairy tale, comparable in some ways to “Strange Beasts of China” by Yan Ge yet less obvious in its references. It’s creepy and hard to read at points, not least Q’s relationship with Aliss and its physicality, though if you see Aliss as a symbol of Western culture, as I think you’re meant to, then it makes some sense.

Linguistically, I think it’s very readable in the most positive sense – I will forever describe Hong Kong summers as “gluey”, as there’s no better words to describe them, and the rest of the book was an easy read, though like most I failed to grasp several references. Definitely worth trying to read if you’re interested in the current HK situation or Chinese literature.

An original, weird and thoughtprovoking political novel criticising China's takeover of Hongkong. Our main character, the strange Professor Q, starts an affair...with a mechanical doll...

It started out very intriguingly and it's very well written (and translated), but as the story evolved I increasingly felt I was missing important points. It must be full of symbols and references, but missing those it became a slightly incoherent tale for me, especially the last 60 pages.

Not being too familiar with the conflict and not too well-versed in Asian literature, I feel that I have not been able to take from this novel all it has to offer. It is the type of book where a book club read with knowledgeable people could easily add a star. For now 3,5.

While this enticing fable makes a heavy nod to the political points it's making, in Dorothy Tse's assured hands it's never too heavy. Excellently translated, too.

‘Owlish’ by Dorothy Tse, tr. Natascha Bruce

“You close your eyes. Everything is clearer when viewed from behind closed eyes.”

This has been one of the most difficult read– perhaps it was the timing, or something else, but I did have to ask myself what is this book really about, even until the very end. It is not to say that it’s horrible, and quite the opposite, I was very engrossed in this liminal world of Owlish.

One way to summarize this novel is that it is a kind of retelling of Pygmalion (with allusions to other myths and stories), about a Professor Q who embarks on a whirlwind love affair with a doll named Aliss. So lost in his own fantasies that the reality, the political upheavals around him are mere shadows, mirage. And indeed, the environment, the city of Nevers, also seems to be in a constant oscillation between reality and dream, indexed occasionally by certain key moments.

I found it hard to pinpoint things, but as I read this it appears to me that that is exactly the point. Even when I do, the pin only punctures a tiniest of hole, and soon falls off. Through the motif of light, different reflective surfaces and troubled gazes, the story suspends us, defracts us. Nothing is ever quite grounded, so to speak; and there’s always more. Just as Professor Q’s mind wanders beyond his material body, always seeing beyond what it is there, the story seems to have wandered beyond the pages into a distant space–you can even say that it is dreamlike.

Yet, the story is underpinned by a kind of jouissance and propelled forward by the character’s desires mirrored in the author&translator’s lush words and melody that leave a lingering echo in your head, like those noises you hear from the dream yet can still hear them at the moment of waking up. That’s how I felt whilst reading, and apparently, what the author’s interested in, shown in the afterword.

Overall, a fascinating read with sprinkles of erotica *wink* *wink*

I struggled to understand this bizarre novel. I tried to connect the links between all that was happening but it did lose me in some parts. Tse is immensely talented in being able to write a somewhat alternative-world/fantasy novel with underlying social commentary, but by the end, it didn’t tie together for me. I think my main issue was with feeling uncomfortable with the relationship between Professor Q and Alisse. It may have been too explicit for me and bordered on squeamish. But it was very reminiscent of Murakami in that way. I enjoy weird books but perhaps this was too weird for me. Clever nonetheless.

Owlish is extremely abstract and overall a very bizarre read, but I'm absolutely intrigued. I'd definitely read this book again, and look forward to reading other people's thoughts on it.

The main protagonist, Professor Q, is oddly likeable to begin with but as the story progresses and his sanity slowly seems to ebb away, he becomes more complex and I definitely found myself torn between dislike and pity. His bizzarely romantic and sexual feelings towards dolls, in particular a dancing ballerina named Aliss, is repulsive but, at the same time, fascinating.

The majority of the book seems shrouded in a dream-like haze with short glimpses of reality, which is unusual but really enjoyable. Absolutely recommend this to anyone who loves books that are a little bizarre.

Well this was certainly quite the literary experience. The writing was stunning, the imagery exceptional but the plot was hell bent on throwing you off course and left scrambling for balance. Even when you thought you knew the dark and disturbing truth Tse would go in an even more bizarre direction…the sex scene I will say no more 👀.

It is speculative, inventive, perverted, weird and admittedly the ending left me with more questions than answers but it is one strong piece of writing.

Recommended to anyone who likes their fiction to sit well outside the box.

"At half a century old, all Professor Q wanted was a love affair, a proper love affair, for once in his life. Now that he finally had the chance to put his desires into action, nothing should have been left standing in his way. But things had been happening in Nevers, among them one small, seemingly insignificant thing that would nevertheless have grave consequences for our professor. And those of us here on the sidelines can only sigh, knowing it was precisely because of how completely he abandoned himself to romance that he remained so oblivious to the danger staring him in the face."

Owlish is Natascha Bruce's translation of Hong Kong writer Dorothy Tse's 2020 debut novel 鷹頭貓與音樂箱女孩 (literally the eagle-headed cat and the music-box girl). published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK and Graywolf Press in the US.

Nicky Harman has previously translated a collection of her surreal short-stories, Snow and Shadow, which was longlisted for the 2015 Best Translated Book Award, but this is Tse's debut novel.

Owlish is set in an alternative, thinly disguised, version of Hong Kong, Nevers. Once part of the Valerian (British) Empire, the country was handed over to its larger neighbour to the North, the Vanguard Republic of Ksana (China), where the official language is Northern (Mandarin) rather than the Southern (Cantonese) which is more standard in Nevers, and indeed the Valerian (English) spoken by the elite. The parallels extend to more detailed descriptions of the harbour and other parts of the cityscape.

Reviewer 876149's informative review identifies the link between the name Nevers and Walter Benjamin, an acknowledged influence on the novel - see below - and the same author's afterword also explains the choice of 'Ksana'. The review did also make me wonder how much else I'd missed in terms of intertextuality and Hong Kong references.

The story is centred on the figure of Professor Q, a university academic and his rather sick infatuation with his collection of dolls:

"The third doll was more crudely fashioned. She was a tiny black girl in a dress that billowed in the style of Marilyn Monroe’s, her hands reaching to press it down. If he hadn’t picked her up, hankering after a glimpse of the delights that lay beneath that windswept skirt, he would never have realized she was a sauce bottle: if you poked your fingers up underneath her clothes, you reached a removable rubber stopper. Her body was porcelain but her head was made of soft, squeezable rubber; Professor Q would pinch and the sauce he’d loaded in, the ketchup or mustard or pesto … well, he could hold her up and watch those different colours gush from inside her, catching them on his finger. He would suck on the finger like a little boy, imagining he was tasting the juices of a real woman."

This goes to another level when he comes across Aliss*, the music-box girl of the original title, who become animate and Professor Q starts an affair with her.

(* the parallel to the name chosen in the English translation Aliss at the Fire of Jon Fosse's Det Er Ales, another recent book from Fitzcarraldo, presumably coincidental. Others in the novel do wonder if the name is supposed to be the Alice, of in Wonderland, or the Elise of Für Elise)

Meanwhile, in Nevers itself, the Vanguard Republic increasingly asserts its repressive influence, leading to student protests at Professor Q's university to which he is oblivious, blinded by his love for Aliss: "Love is blind, as the saying goes. Although, in the case of Professor Q, it would be more accurate to say that love had rearranged his vision."

The Owlish of the title is a mysterious friend of Professor Q who he first contacts by phone, but on a five-digit number that should no longer work, then more by telepathy, and finally one suspects Owlish may more be the Professor's alter-ego. It is the name by which he is known to Aliss and he explains to her (linking to the 'eagle-headed cat' of the original title):

"If an owl is a bird with a head like a cat, perhaps we should say Owlish is a cat with a head like a bird? To be Owlish is to be a creature somewhere in between a mammal and a bird. To be Owlish is to be a bird that can’t fly, at least not at the moment, but who can climb tall trees and pretend to be a bird, borrowing its nest from other birds. For now, that’s what it must do to survive."

And as the novel progresses, a parallel shadow world starts to emerge, one where Aliss is more accepted than in the human world, and where the authorities suspect the protestors may have fled.

In an afterword, Tse sets out the origin of the novel, explaining that in the 2014 Occupy Movement in Hong Kong the protestors told the people to 'wake up' and that during the 2019 pro-democracy protests, many suggested the protestors were 'dreaming'.

"With your face covered, sneaking into a city you thought you knew, are you still yourself ? Or have you crossed to another world, where the streets are unpredictable and the people strangers, where you might at any moment run into some unknown dream version of yourself ? I’m thinking of Walter Benjamin’s obsession with the Parisian arcades. For him, they were a bygone world, a dreamscape divorced from reality, but precisely in that dialectic between dreaming and waking, at the point where the material world and one’s innermost being meet, the past suddenly opens wide to the present and, for a split second–for a ksana, that Buddhist notion of the smallest possible moment–we attain the state of awakening."

The 2015 BTBA, for which Dorothy Tse's work was shortlisted, was won by Can Xue's Last Lover in Annelise Finegan Wasmoen's translation, and Can Xue's work is perhaps the closest comparison I can think of for Owlish, although Dorothy Tse's work is more accessible. Indeed one could, adapting Can Xue's words , argue that Tse stops at the level of 'dream-writing', or certainly that my reading of it stopped at the level of 'dream reading'.

An intriguing but slightly unsatisfying work - the Professor Q / doll story was rather icky, and the parallels with the situation in Hong Kong, at least those I could pick up, felt very direct. But I suspect a work that has hidden depths which I missed. 3 stars.

I always jump at the chance to read a new novel published by this publisher — it seems as though each of their new books are engineered to appeal to me specifically.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions for an eARC of Owlish by Dorothy Tse and translated by Natascha Bruce in exchange for an honest review.

I found Owlish to be an all-consuming read which intoxicated me with the need to read more constantly. Dorothy Tse's prose as translated by Natascha Bruce made a fantastical take about obsession visceral through ornate prose which describes the protagonist's incessant lust for Aliss, a favourite obesession. Tse expertly weaves this narrative with the sub-plot of sinister forces in the deep underbelly of The Nevers creating an ever increasing sense of dread in the last act of the narrative structure. The consequence is questioning of sanity and indeed morality within the characterisation of Professor Q and those he interacts with. Indeed, I believe that Tse has created an intricate world and narrative that requires a second reading of the novel to garner all the various aspects of the novel a reader may miss on their initial read. Indeed Owlish is a novel that remains with your long after the last page, lingering to make you question the uncanny inferences imbued with our lived reality. I would highly recommend this at times challenging yet ultimately rewarding read.

2.5. Kinda wild. A midlife crisis and an affair with a (living?) doll. Social commentary not-so-thinly veiled, a good dash of surrealism and floaty prose. A nice mix of stuff but nothing came together exceptionally. When Tse publishes again I'll be there, as a debut, this gives a lot to think about. Some bits are uncomfortable with the fist-sized dolls licking our 50-year-old protagonist to completion, but Tse did keep me generally engaged, even when I was a little taken aback. Reminiscent of Murakami in many ways I think, but nice and refreshing to read something surreal and weird, about sexualised women (young women too, and literally very small and childlike women), not written by Murakami, or any other man, for that matter. May add some more thoughts but it's late and I have work in the morning.

This isn't published till early next year. Thanks to Fitzcarraldo for the ARC.