In his insightful Translator’s Note, Carlos Rojas compares “The Day the Sun Died” to “Ulysses,” both for its famous single-day narrative, but also for its famous comparison of history to a nightmare (one from which Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus is trying to awaken), equating history with sleep and dreams, rich, recurrent symbols at work in Yan’s novel. Yet Joyce’s “Dubliners” also serves as a useful comparison. Not only are the citizens of Joyce’s Dublin trapped in a state of paralysis, unable to act for themselves, but they are also miniature versions of larger sociopolitical systems, a relationship that Joyce scholars term “gnomonic,” Thus are Yan’s people and places similarly related to each other. In this way, Yan has brilliantly structured his novel in a series of concentric circles, moving from our narrator to his father to his uncle to his family and the village and county and town, and so forth, ultimately encompassing the entire world.
Source: latimes.com – Los Angeles Times