‘I am bereft to have finished it! From the suburbs of Philadelphia to the streets of Saigon, I was completely immersed in the lives of these very special characters. I loved it.’ EMILY ITAMI, author of Fault Lines

‘A beautifully told story of family, identity, loss and belonging’ JENNIE GODFREY, No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The List of Suspicious Things

‘Poignant and powerful, this is a novel that lingers long after the final page’ JEAN KWOK, author of Girl in Translation

‘Beautifully written and accomplished’ NUSSAIBAH YOUNIS, author of Fundamentally

‘Authentic and full of life’ JESSICA STANLEY, author of Consider Yourself Kissed

May 1998: Mimi Traung and her baby daughter Ngan wait restlessly at the gates of Philadelphia airport. There is still a day’s travelling left before they would land back home on Vietnamese soil. While they prepare to board, the unimaginable happens.

Seventeen years later, two best friends are discussing their summer plans before college over a piece of mooncake. Both have trips ahead in search of their roots: Sabrina is preparing to travel to China to meet her mother’s family. Kit leaves for Tokyo, convinced that her biological mother is Japanese. Their parents watch on from the quiet suburbs of Chestnut Hill, nervous of what their daughters might find.

Meanwhile, Mimi returns to Philadelphia in search of her lost child, tracing memories from that fateful day waiting at the gates. Each of these women are looking to find their place in the world. Eventually Mimi, Kit and Sabrina come face to face, and have to confront the people they truly are, dismantling their own assumptions about belonging and the importance of blood ties.

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING
‘An unflinching exploration of Asian-American identity, discrimination, adoption, and classism.’
‘An emotional whirlwind … A magnificent coming-of-age novel’
‘At times heartbreaking and other times joyfully life-affirming … This is a novel that spans decades and continents, yet remains deeply intimate and moving’
‘The type of book you can’t put down’
‘A rights of passage tale with a twist’

Meet River Langston-Lee. In the past 24 hours, he’s dumped his girlfriend, walked out of his SATs, and quit his job at his parents’ Seattle cafe in spectacularly disastrous fashion – even for him.

Somehow, he manages to talk his way into a job at a failing Korean cafe, Bingsu for Two. This could be his lucky break – but then he meets grumpy goth Sarang Cho, his new, no-BS co-worker, and she is as determined to make River’s life hell as she is to save her family’s cafe.

After River accidentally uploads a video of his chaotic co-workers to his popular fandom account, the cafe strikes viral fame. The kicker? Their new fans are putting River and Sarang together, big-time. In order to keep the internet’s attention – and the cafe’s new paying customers – River and Sarang must pretend that the tension between them is definitely of the romantic variety, not the considering the best way to kill you and hide your body variety.

But when Bingsu for Two’s newfound success catches the attention of River’s ex and his parents’ cafe around the corner, he faces a choice: keep letting others control his life or stand up for the place that’s become home. And a green-haired girl who’s not as heartless as he originally thought . . .

Discover Amy Tan’s moving and poignant tale of immigrant Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters.

In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters’ futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club.

Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers’ advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives – until their own inner crises reveal how much they’ve unknowingly inherited of their mothers’ pasts.

‘Pure enchantment’ Mail on Sunday