No Exit

What An Yu's "Sunbirth" reveals about how we struggle with the things we can't change

Some novels require a revisit to fully absorb their meaning and power. When I first read An Yu’s Sunbirth, I was distracted from some of its philosophical and political underpinnings by the story’s strangeness: the sun disappearing sliver by sliver; people transforming into miniature suns; a noir-ish side mystery; nameless characters in a nameless country somewhere in time.

I recently reread the book — which I love to do when I have the time and inclination — and kept landing on lines that struck me as even more provocative and profound the second time around. The weirdness was still there, but the book’s essence had become more discernible — not unlike the piercing light that for a time illuminated Five Poems Lake.

The novel’s protagonist is torn when it comes to wanting to learn the truth behind her father’s death and the mystery of the vanishing sun. While she is inclined towards an uneasy acceptance that she’ll never know what’s really transpired in either case (“For now, we did our best to live in the present, focus our attention on the food we were eating, the heat on our skin, the weariness rising to our heads,” she tells us, and herself), she also doesn’t get how other people can just go about their business, incurious about the momentous events unfolding: “I couldn’t understand why all the people around me believed in the illusion that it was a privilege to live without knowledge. I couldn’t see how ignorance could ever be the safest state of existence.”

There’s so much in Sunbirth that’s about the absence of truth or fact. Everyone is in the dark — no pun intended — whether because the police, or the government authority never identified in the novel, is keeping information from the people, or there simply is no explanation. No one really knows what’s happening or why.

But on a micro level, the novel is about how the main characters come to terms with the fact that understanding may be forever beyond them, and how they discover what it means to live with uncertainty. They search for the truth even as they understand they might never find it — or that they won’t be able to accept it. They keep secrets to protect those they love, or to shield themselves from danger, never knowing whether they are doing harm or good, never seeing the effects of their actions.

As dire as the truth may be, An Yu seems to be saying, there is no light without it. And even if you’re shut off from the effects of your actions, that’s no excuse not to act.

I did highlight many sentences as I read Sunbirth for the second time. I’m posting some of them below. We’re eager to hear your take on the thoughts above, and also what questions you’d like to pose when we meet with An Yu live on Wednesday, August 27, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern.

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