“Chen-Fu's talent imbues his writing with a wildness, but also with a fierce self-expectation, so that it leaps across sheer cliffs like a snow leopard. This work left a deep impression on me, for when life is at its most vital, it is not some delirious ‘unity of man and nature’ or false harmony, but wild ambition. It is seeds scattering by any means they can, migratory birds crossing thousands of miles without hesitation, mammals expanding outward after being driven from their own kin.”—Wu Ming-yi, author of The Man with Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize
“What's a Snow Leopard to You? builds through accretion, layering stories, travel writing, and social, cultural, and environmental histories into a moving elegy for love, an elusive animal, a vanishing culture, and a disappearing landscape. Its cumulative emotional force quietly reshapes the reader's sense of living in the world.”—Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Green Island
“An aching literary meditation on ecological interconnectedness, impermanence, and loss.... A memorable, thought-provoking debut novel.”—Booklist
Description
*Winner of the 2021 Taiwan Literature Award*
A captivating fusion of travelogue, fiction, and cultural meditation that journeys deep into the heart of Tibet.
Chen-Fu Hsu’s debut novel begins with a young Taiwanese naturalist on an arduous quest for the elusive snow leopard, weaving in excerpts from translated entries from a left behind diary of a fictional Japanese monk, which bears witness to the seismic transformations of Tibet across the decades under Chinese rule.
Following his deeply spiritual connection to Tibet, the protagonist sets off on multiple journeys to the region, describing in brilliant detail the vast beauty of the Tibetan plateau and the wildlife that has existed since time immemorial. However, on his third visit to the region, he is harassed at every turn by the Chinese police who confiscate his belongings, including his books, eventually forcing him to leave for Taiwan. One book overlooked by the Chinese police is the long-lost diary of Udagawa Ekai, a Zen monk who traveled to Lhasa in the postwar years. The diary tells the monk's story up until his death as a recluse, and paints a picture of a Tibet that has a diverse and deeply religious culture that has fought against invaders on multiple fronts.
Hsu laces excerpts from Ekai’s diary within his narrative, tracing the changes sparked from the horrors of the Chinese military annexation in the 1950s through the Cultural Revolution and into the contemporary age of forced economic development. Through encounters with the people of Tibet and their stories, What's a Snow Leopard to You? spans the divide between an intimate portrait of a land in flux and a philosophical inquiry into humanity’s fraught yet enduring bond with nature. This richly layered work braids history with myth, environmentalism with art, and creates a single story of change in one of the world’s most sparsely inhabited regions.
