He got cheated on. His girlfriend ran off with their bald team leader.
Standing on the cruise ship’s deck, he fell silent for ten seconds, then threw the ring he’d planned to propose with into the sea. The ship sank.
Wu Yixuan, an engineer at a defense contractor, washed up on the beach of an unnamed deserted island, clutching a battered copy of the Whiteman Survival Manual. He’s the protagonist of this story. He’s no elite soldier, just an incredibly unlucky ordinary guy whose mouth is tougher than he is.
With a Swiss Army knife and a waterlogged manual, he starts from scratch on the island.
He tries to make fire six times. The seventh time, he finally succeeds.
He makes pottery. It collapses. He fires it again. It collapses again. He starts over.
He smelts iron and nearly burns himself to death.
He plants crops, then a flash flood washes away his taro field. He starts over.
One man, one hundred and fifty days. A bamboo hut, an iron axe, a salt field, a smokehouse: he turns the deserted island into a home.
One day, a boat pulls ashore. The person who steps off isn’t a rescue team, but a dark-skinned woman with a Vietnamese accent. Her name is A Jiu, and the first thing she says on the island is: “I don’t want to leave.”
Gradually, more people arrive. A botanist, a veteran, a fisherwoman, a university lecturer... Each one drifts here bearing their own scars. They argue, cry, nearly fall apart, and nearly die at the hands of pirates.
Together, they build a home here.
This isn’t a wish-fulfillment novel about starting on a deserted island and breezing through with cheat powers. It’s a story about how to live again after losing everything.
You’ll laugh, because Wu Yixuan is an absolute motormouth.
You’ll cry, because the things they say to the stars in the dead of night are things every one of us has felt.
You’ll understand: you don’t need much in life.
