Asian writer’s captivating tale of ecology and love
On Wayo Wayo, an isolated (and wholly invented) South Pacific island, in the near future, 15-year-old Atile’i comes of age and, as the tradition of his people dictates with regard to second sons, is sent out onto the ocean alone, as a sacrifice to the sea god, never to return. The currents lock him into a tide of discarded waste, a so-called ‘trash vortex’, that eventually washes up on the shores of Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Alice Shih, a literature professor contemplating suicide following the disappearance of her husband and son in a mountain accident, is forced to put her plans on hold when a media frenzy descends on her coastal home-town to record the ecological disaster. It is she who rescues Atile’i from the mess, and they escape to the tranquillity of the mountains and begin to live for one another.
