Four Treasures of the Sky
By Jenny Tinghui Xhang
Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been-including the ones she most wants to leave behind-in order to finally claim her own name and story.
At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat.
"An engulfing, bighearted and heartbreaking novel. Illuminates shocking injustices, making us stop and consider how many survive to this day..."
Ann Patchett, author of Women's Prize longlisted The Dutch House
"A sweeping adventure of identity, love and belonging"
C Pam Zhang, Man Booker longlisted author of How Much of These Hills are Gold
"Brilliant and devastating. Four Treasures of the Sky tells the story of Daiyu, who is brought to America against her will and forced to hide who she is even as she grows into her true self. Weaving together myth and history, Zhang's work is both timeless and utterly necessary right now."
Anna North, author of the New York Times bestseller Outlawed
Jenny Tinghui Zhang is a Texas-based Chinese-American writer who holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Wyoming (where she wrote the popular Catapult column Why-oming) and is an alumna of the 2016 VONA/Voices, Tin House Summer 2019 & Winter 2020 Workshops. Jenny is a prose editor at Adroit Journal and has written nonfiction for The Cut, Bustle, Huffington Post, and HelloGiggles; her fiction has appeared in Ninth Letter, Passages North, CALYX, The Rumpus, and more.
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Mary Anne xxx