Book Talk | Mending Bodies by Hon Lai-Chu

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ABOUT THE BOOK

For readers of Ling Ma and Sayaka Murata, Hon Lai Chu’s dystopian exploration of body autonomy, relationships, and late capitalism defies and then reassembles dark realities.

In a failing city, a government program incentivizes couples to “conjoin”—surgically attach themselves to one another—promising a flourishing economy, ecological revitalization, and personal fulfillment. 

A student writing her dissertation on the program’s history begins to suffer from insomnia. As her world unravels and under the weight of expectations by both society and her close friends, she worries that maybe they are all right when they tell her it would be better—for the good of another person and for the good of the country—to sacrifice everything that she is and get conjoined. Mending Bodies blends body horror and political allegory to explore a world where even the motives of those you love most are shaped by larger forces.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hon Lai Chu is one of Hong Kong's most prominent writers and the author of several novels, including Mending Bodies, Degravitation Zone, and A Dictionary of Two Cities, co-authored with Dorothy Tse, which won the Hong Kong Book Prize. Her most recent works are Half-Eclipse and Darkness under the Sun, two diaristic essay collections about Hong Kong. She has also received accolades from Taiwan's Unitas Literary Association, the Liang Shiu-chiu Literature Award, the Dream of the Red Chamber Award, and the Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature, among many others.

 IN CONVERSATION WITH

Jacqueline Leung is a writer and translator from Hong Kong. Her work has appeared in Wasafiri, Transtext(e)s Transcultures, Gulf Coast, Asymptote, Nashville Review, SAND Journal, the Asian Review of Books, Books From Taiwan, Cha, and elsewhere. She is a translator editor at The Offing and a 2024 fellow for literature with the Asian Cultural Council. Her translation of Hon Lai Chu's novel Mending Bodies is a winner of PEN Presents by English PEN.

Bonnie Chau is a writer and translator from Southern California. Her short story collection All Roads Lead to Blood was a finalist for a 2019 CLMP Firecracker Award, and her writing has appeared in Flaunt, Two Lines, Fence, Bennington Review, Black Sun Lit, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction and literary translation, and has received fellowships from Kundiman, Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony, Black Mountain Institute, and the Stadler Center. She edits at Public Books, the Evergreen Review, and 4Columns; teaches creative writing and translation; and serves on the boards of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and Art Farm Nebraska.