Shadow of the Hunter

Prey, Predator, Predator, Prey. On this street, the hunters are also the hunted.

Shadow of the Hunter is a darkly humorous novel featuring three protagonists: bondage expert Baorun; ‘jack-the-lad’ Liu Sheng; and the beautiful but unscrupulous Fairy Princess (aka Miss Bai). It is a dystopian, dysfunctional vision of unrequited love linked to the fable of the oriole, the mantis and the cicada, though not explicitly.

The people of China tell of an ancient tale, where the mantis hunts the cicada, unaware of the yellow bird behind it. In a small corner of one of its many cities, a random act of violence sets off a spinning top, entwining the lives of three people.

Baorun, the compulsive bondage expert, is forever aided and abetted by Liu Sheng, a brash troublemaker, to indulge in his obsessions; and the lady Fairy Princess, ever-youthful, becomes the target of the pair’s escalating antics.

As the years pass, many things begin to change, but in the dysfunctional world of a mental hospital at the end of Red Toon Street, just who is prey, and who is predator?

Often insightful and occasionally unsettling, Shadow of the Hunter is a memorable tale concerned with guilt, injustice, madness and the struggle not to lose one’s soul to history. It is one of Su Tong’s most acclaimed works, now available in English for the first time.