A man wakes up in a prison cell, his body aching and his memory totally gone, just at the very moment someone comes to get him out. His saviour is a street racer and a con man, and he is as suspicious of his charge’s amnesia as our protagonist is of him. The terror and the courage that come with total memory loss drive the protagonist to stick with him – if only he could remember who he is.
Eventually, he finds evidence of a name – Yan Ying – that appears to be his. He’s told that he is also a street racer, and an even bigger hustler than his partner. Though he remembers nothing about driving, his partner is taking him to a race in the desert anyway. In an effort to trigger a recall, our protagonist dives into the practice of racing, and unearths everything he can about his own past. He tries re-building his own story, until one day he discovers that the name Yan Ying might not be his at all. Reclamation may lie in deeper, more dangerous stimuli.
The book that took author Cheng Ying-Shu five years and a racing license to write transports the reader on a red-lined ride into the empty deserts of the mind, where every sharp curve and sudden precipice threaten to throw us into the unknown.