REVIEWS
Angst, art and the price of apathy
Dorothy Tse’s debut novel, Owlish, is a fantastic if discomforting work of art. In scintillant prose (as translated by Natascha Bruce from the original Chinese), Tse conjures up the figure of Professor Q , a middle-aged man wearied by his dreary life within the city of Nevers. This setting is the author’s surreal, alternative version of modern-day Hong Kong.
In the narrative, though the coastal territory of Nevers has since been “handed over” to the control