Author(s): Kristina Carlson; Mikko Alapuro (translator)

Novel | Translated fiction | Finland | Lolli Editions

An ageing eunuch, named Wang Wei after the great poet, looks back on his life at the court of the Song dynasty in 12th-century China

Wang Wei has always chosen his words carefully. His unobtrusive presence has seen him through the reign of five emperors, but now, as his own time is running out, he immerses himself in an unbridled account of a life confined at court. From the early separation from his parents, sisters, and brother – who did not survive the operation into a eunuch – to the power struggles he has witnessed and endured, Wang Wei examines human relationships with precision and a catching sense of wonder. While rumours are weapons, it is love and its various forms of expression that most fascinate Wang Wei.

Reaching into a secret and secluded world, Carlson's vivid prose is as delicate as it is enigmatic. A meditation on power and exclusion, love and loneliness, gender and identity, ageing and transformation, Eunuch is a compact masterpiece.

Adeptly using the very particular to get at the achingly universal, Eunuch is a short but striking meditation on difference and belonging. Someone who has always lived in-between will recognise that the stages of dusk are just as real as night and day. Elegant and earthy in turns, evoking whole worlds with deceptively simple words, Carlson’s writing recalls the aphoristic poetry of her narrator’s era
– Kaisa Saarinen

In this work, Carlson explores loneliness, humanity, and the individual’s relationship with society. Its setting in a distant place and time creates a sense of defamiliarisation yet emphasises the timelessness of the ageing eunuch’s thoughts. Carlson’s clear, precise language is lyrical, often aphoristic, and the verbal snapshots are like Chinese poems or wood carvings
– Nordic Council Literature Prize Jury

Eunuch recognises the fragility of the happiness of emperors, idle officials, philosophers, and the rich who care only about their riches. Colourful and corporeal, Eunuch is a continuation of Carlson’s deep interest in science and culture – and the way in which an outsider and ageing figure regards the society he both is and isn't part of
– Kiiltomato

KRISTINA CARLSON (b. 1949) is a Finnish writer. The author of 17 books, her work has won the Finlandia Prize in 1999, the State Prize in Literature, the ‘Tack för boken’ medal, and the English translation of Mr Darwin’s Gardener was longlisted for the DUBLIN literary Award. Both Mr Darwin’s Gardenerand Eunuch were nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

MIKKO ALAPURO is a literary translator and philologist working between Finnish and English.