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  • Published: 3 March 2026
  • ISBN: 9780735249684
  • Imprint: Penguin Canada
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $38.00

Batshit Seven




WINNER OF THE 2024 WRITERS' TRUST ATWOOD GIBSON FICTION PRIZE

“Incredibly powerful.” —Toronto Star

From Governor General’s Award-nominated author Sheung-King comes a novel about a millennial living through the Hong Kong protests, as he struggles to make sense of modern life and the parts of himself that just won’t gel.

*WINNER OF THE 2024 WRITERS' TRUST ATWOOD GIBSON FICTION PRIZE*

From Governor General's Award-nominated author Sheung-King comes a novel about a millennial living through the Hong Kong protests, as he struggles to make sense of modern life and the parts of himself that just won’t gel.

Glen Wu (aka Glue) couldn’t care less about his job. He’s returned to Hong Kong, the city he grew up in, and he’s teaching ESL, just to placate his parents. But he shows up hungover to class, barely stays awake, and prefers to spend his time smoking up until dawn breaks.
 
As he watches the city he loves fall—the protests, the brutal arrests—life continues around him. So he drinks more, picks more fights with his drug dealer friend, thinks loftier thoughts about the post-colonial condition and Frantz Fanon. The very little he does care about: his sister, who deals with Hong Kong’s demise by getting engaged to a rich immigration consultant; his on-and-off-again relationship with a woman who steals things from him; and memories of someone he once met in Canada....
 
When the government tightens its grip, language starts to lose all meaning for Glue, and he finds himself pulled into an unsettling venture, ultimately culminating in an act of violence.
 
Inventive and utterly irresistible, with QR codes woven throughout, Sheung-King’s ingenious novel encapsulates the anxieties and apathies of the millennial experience. Batshit Seven is an ode to a beloved city, an indictment of the cycles of imperialism, and a reminder of the beautiful things left under the hype of commodified living.

  • Published: 3 March 2026
  • ISBN: 9780735249684
  • Imprint: Penguin Canada
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $38.00

Praise for Batshit Seven

Praise for Batshit Seven:

  • An audacious reinvention of the novel for a dystopian age.... Sheung-King deftly conveys the dilemma of the self-aware citizen through the character of Glue.... Assimilation or self-parody are increasingly Glue’s only options—modes of existence Sheung-King brilliantly evokes through the very language of the novel.... Poignant, darkly hilarious, and stunningly original.” —2024 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury Citation (Saeed Teebi, Joan Thomas, and Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike)