Sunbirth: A Surreal Apocalypse Tale That Fails to Shine

In the fictional village of Five Poems Lake, the sun has started to disappear. One morning, it looks like "half of an orange, rays oozing out from its cut side." A few days later, it is "no longer a recognizable shape, more like a small red smudge."

- Cherie Lok

SUNBIRTH By An Yu Fiction/Harvill Secker/Hardcover/ 256 pages/$34.89 ★★☆☆☆

As the lake freezes over and chaos grips the village, survival hangs in the balance. Then come the Beacons, ordinary townsfolk whose heads have been replaced by blinding light—a fate that befalls them at random.

Do they herald salvation or ruin? Why did the sun vanish? What will happen to the town now? If answers are what you seek, you will not find them here.

Sunbirth is the third novel by Beijing-born author An Yu. Like her previous works, Braised Pork (2020) and Ghost Music (2022), this story meanders through a dreamlike world thrumming with melancholy.

Here, the end of the world is quiet and dim. Readers traverse this eerie apocalypse through the eyes of a protagonist so nondescript, the novel does not even bother naming her. In prose as bare and bloodless as the world it delineates, this young woman tries to carry on with life as per normal, even as society disintegrates and friends turn suicidal.