You are Eating an Orange. You are Naked.

Longlisted for Canada Reads 2021

A young translator travels from his home in Toronto to Hong Kong, Macau, Prague, Tokyo. His unnamed lover comes with him: in restaurants and hotel rooms, they entertain each other with comic and enigmatic folk tales. Yet their verbal play and philosophical questions mask the fragility of their own relationship, which is made still more tenuous by he woman's unexplained disappearances.

You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. is an intimate novel of memory and longing that challenges Western tropes and Orientalism. Embracing the playful surrealism of Haruki Murakami and the atmospheric narratives of filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, Sheung-King's debut is at once lyrical and punctuated, and wholly unique, and marks the arrival of a bold new voice in Canadian literature.