The Invisibility Cloak
An NYRB Classics Original The hero of The Invisibility Cloak lives in contemporary Beijing—where everyone is doing their best to hustle up the ladder of success while shouldering an ever-growing burden of consumer goods—and he’s a loser. Well into his forties, he’s divorced (and still doting on his ex), childless, and living with his sister (her husband wants him out) in an apartment at the edge of town with a crack in the wall the wind from the north blows through while he gets by, just, by making customized old-fashioned amplifiers for the occasional rich audio-obsessive. He has contempt for his clients and contempt for himself. The only things he really likes are Beethoven and vintage speakers. Then an old friend tips him off about a special job—a little risky but just don’t ask too many questions—and can it really be that this hopeless loser wins? This provocative and seriously funny exercise in the social fantastic by the brilliantly original Ge Fei, one of China’s finest living writers, is among the most original works of fiction to come out of China in recent years. It is sure to appeal to readers of Haruki Murakami and other fabulists of contemporary irreality.
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What Hacker News says
- Enjoyed:
- Chocky - John Wyndham
- Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
- The Eight Mountains - Paolo Cognetti
- The Executioner Weeps - Frederic Dard
- The Invisibility Cloak - Ge Fei
- The Midnight Fox - Betsy Byars
- Ms Ice Sandwich - Mieko Kawakami
- Such Small Hands - Andres Barba
- The Thief - Fuminori Nakamura
- Ties - Domenico Starnone
- Trick - Domenico Starnone
- I recommend reading the book The Invisibility Cloak by Ge Fei
- For thise interested in Murakami's contemporaries, Banana Yoshimoto is an interesting case. I've only read one of her works, Kitchen, but the similarity is almost astonishing. They both cover themes of loss, a strong sense of a mystical undercurrent right underneath everyday life, and independent (but not necessarily rebellious) protagonists -- and, while it may be an artifact of translation, they have similarly uncluttered but lively prose. She came a bit after he did, in the late 80s, so maybe he influenced her.
In Chinese, Ge Fei's Invisibility Cloak -- while a much more recent work -- also comes to mind, although there's something harder and less dreamy about it. Invisibility Cloak is about a niche audio technician and hobbyist who gets involved with a strange underworld customer, and I'll leave it at that :)
If you like Murakami and want to dip a toe into "deeper" (or at least more prestigious and less popular) Japanese fiction, Kenzaburo Oe (Changeling, A Personal Matter) is a good starting point. If you want to go darker, a little more unhinged, and on the opposite end of the political spectrum, Yukio Mishima (Confessions of a Mask) is also good.
If you want to go even further back, Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters is an oddly enjoyable story of adult sisters and their shifting relationships -- if Proust is like a jungle, alive and profligate and almost obscenely lush, then Tanizaki is more like fresh-cut wood, clean and with a certain reserve and neutrality, but still alive.
I find Yasunari Kawabata the least accessible of all these writers, but he seems to be held in high esteem in Japan. His Snow Country is I'm guessing making references to things I don't understand, but it's at least pleasant to read, and the ending is (I'm told, and at least kind of feel, but not with any sophistication) a very nice example of ma, which Wikipedia tells me roughly means negative space.
Finally, to end an overlong post, I first heard of most of these things in Brian Phillips' excellent longform article connecting modern Japanese sumo, older Japanese literature, and Yukio Mishima's very strange attempted coup/suicide: http://grantland.com/features/sumo-wrestling-tokyo-japan-hak...
- The Invisibility Cloak by Ge Fei (2016). Chinese author and setting (contemporary Beijing).
Following the theme of the solitary male antihero...a la Murakami.
- Non-fiction:
7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton Helmer
American Wolf - Nate Blakeslee
Atomic Habits - James Clear
Conspiracy - Ryan Holiday
Courage To Be Disliked - Ichiro Kishimi
How To Change Your Mind - Michael Pollan
Open - Andre Agassi
Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker
World After Capital - Albert Wenger
Fiction:
Chocky - John Wyndham
Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
The Eight Mountains - Paolo Cognetti
The Invisibility Cloak - Ge Fei
The Midnight Fox - Betsy Byars
Such Small Hands - Andres Barba
The Thief - Fuminori Nakamura
Ties - Domenico Starnone
Trick - Domenico Starnone
