Spent Bullets - by Terao Tetsuya

Book Synopsis

Set in Taiwan and the Silicon Valley, a collection of linked stories that explore the meaning of success and the purpose of existence, centered on the short life and long shadow of an engineering genius who descends deeper into despair while rising higher on the professional ladder.

The hard-working geniuses of Spent Bullets are the crème de la crème of the meritocracy. Educated in the best schools in Taiwan, they move to lucrative positions in America's big tech, reaching the pinnacle of career prestige. Yet there is a dark side to their relentless focus and achievements.

In an age that idolizes success, Terao Tetsuya's piercing collection explores the grotesque contortions of psyches shaped by hyper-competitive systems, where the measure of one's worth is a capacity for suffering--witnessed through the brief, shining life of Jie-Heng, a prodigy who can solve any logic problem--but not the problem of human relations. Jie-Heng mostly does what is expected of him, even if it means diminishing his individuality. A young man with no center to ground him, he tries to fit in, yet fails to connect because of other people's fear, misunderstanding, resentment, and obsessive adoration.

His most vital deviation is a perverse, longstanding relationship with Wu Yi-Hsiang, a tormentor turned lover who offers a thin tether to reality. Wu Yi-Hsiang is fascinated by Jie-Heng's intellect and, with his own anxious need to please, carefully tends to Jie-Heng's desire for debasement. When Jie-Heng's yearning to embrace the void is tragically realized, he leaves behind a host of unanswered questions, complicated feelings, and cohorts who carry his memory like a bullet in a glass case that will never tarnish.

A searing look at our time and culture, Terao Tetsuya exposes the absurdity of striving: to make money, to be a better person, to be someone you're not. With cool, calculating precision, he illuminates the promise and peril of gifted young people who patiently bear the burdens of their fate.

Translated from Chinese by Kevin Wang

Review Quotes

An instant classic. Spent Bullets whizzes and aims straight at the rotten heart of technological capitalism. Decades from now, or perhaps tomorrow, we will use this book to rouse ourselves from our blind allegiance to meritocracy's ruthless logic. In these bold, unapologetic stories, an elite group of Taiwanese tech workers grapple with suppressed self-loathing, guilt, and wayward desire. They surrender their moral compass for the easy seductions of refrigerated drinks, and fetishize suicide and kink as their only outlets for self-expression. Bracing, shocking, yet utterly enjoyable, Spent Bullets delivers a reading experience you won't easily forget. -- Anelise Chen, author of CLAM DOWN and SO MANY OLYMPIC EXERTIONS

The endlessly surprising Spent Bullets draws together the most taboo of human desires with the most conventional measures of success. Translator Kevin Wang's prose shape-shifts between the stickiest details and the clinical clarity of the narrators' sharp minds, delicately recreating the tension between Terao Tetsuya's lucid voice and the book's visceral, existential subject matter. A groundbreaking English-language debut from a Taiwanese author to watch. -- Lin King, writer and National Book Award-winning translator of Yang Shuang-zi's TAIWAN TRAVELOGUE

This perfect, crystalline translation--shaped by Wang's nimble irony and gloriously musical ear--captures the loneliness, despair, and friendship of young computing geniuses in Taiwan. Their parents are largely absent, as if modern society consumes all: from tech corporations driving aggressive capitalism to the individualism instilled in schools from early childhood. These fragile youth excel within the systems that define them, yet must invent their own absurd humor to endure the meager rewards. Spent Bullets is a savage poem on modern life in a globalized 21st century. -- Michelle Kuo, author of READING WITH PATRICK