Longlisted for 2018 Man Booker International. A young writer's quest to recover a stolen bicycle leads to unexpected encounters. Stories within stories emerge, tracing the history of Taiwan and one family's fortunes.

Longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. A writer embarks on an epic quest in search of his missing father’s stolen bicycle and soon finds himself ensnared in the strangely intertwined stories of Lin Wang, the oldest elephant who ever lived, the soldiers who fought in the jungles of South-East Asia during World War II, and the secret world of butterfly handicraft makers in Taiwan. The result is both a majestic historical novel and an intimate meditation on memory, family and home. Wu’s writing has been compared to that of Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, W.G. Sebald and Yann Martel.