Floating Life

Abstract

This excerpt is Part Two of Hong Kong novelist Dung Kai-Cheung’s 2018 novel Beloved Wife. Part One is told from the point of view of Seh Zi Yin, a university professor, and begins with Seh seeing off his wife, Lung Yuk Man, at the airport as she begins a sabbatical year at Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Part One describes Seh’s life in his wife’s absence, including his encounters with a mysterious foreigner who is researching technology that will allow for the duplication, uploading, storage, and downloading of human consciousness. Part Two, composed entirely of dialogue between Seh and his wife, turns Seh’s world on its head. Dung’s novel, inspired in part by Ghost in the Shell, is at once the story of a marriage and a philosophical exploration of what it means to be human.