An Yu

*A STYLIST BEST BOOK OF 2020* One autumn morning after breakfast, when she finds her husband dead in the bathtub, Jia Jia's life changes in ways she could never have imagined... 'So elegant and poised, so tuned to the great mysteries of love and loss. Braised Pork is a major debut' -- John Freeman One morning in autumn, just after breakfast, Jia Jia finds her husband dead in the bathtub of their Beijing apartment. Next to him is a piece of folded paper, a sketch of a strange creature from his dream. He has left her no other sign. Young, alone, and with many unanswered questions, Jia Jia sets out to discover what this this mysterious clue might mean. From the high-rises to the hidden bars of contemporary Beijing, she crosses paths with people who call the city home, including someone who may be able to offer her the love she had long thought impossible. Her journey takes her to the high plains of Tibet, and even to a shadowy, watery otherworld, a place she both yearns for and fears. Cinematic, dreamlike and very beautiful, Braised Pork is an exploration of myth-making, loss, and a world beyond words, and of a young woman's search deep into her past in order to arrive at her future. 'Bold yet understated, Braised Pork is the debut of a supremely confident and gifted writer' Katie Kitamura 'What a singular, slippery, transfixing novel this is. An Yu achieves a hypnotizing emotional clarity as she takes her narrator ever further from a stifling life in Beijing into a watery realm unlike any I've read before.' Idra Novey 'This exquisite novel is many things: a detective story in which the real object of pursuit is how one makes meaning of a sometimes ineffable existence; a meditation on the talismanic power of art and the indefatigability of the human spirit; and a many-faceted, perfectly cut gem of psychological portraiture set in well-wrought sentences burnished to a gorgeous luster. The emotions in this book keep pace with you, shadowing you with a quiet intensity, until in the last stretch they overtake you completely.' Matthew Thomas

Braised Pork

From the author of the "original and electric" Braised Pork (Time), An Yu's enchanting and contemplative novel of music and mushrooms follows a former concert pianist searching for the truth about a vanished musicianFor three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. She gave up on her own career as a concert pianist many years ago, but her husband Bowen, an executive at a car company, has long rebuffed her pleas to have a child. He resists even when his mother arrives from the southwestern Chinese region of Yunnan and begins her own campaign for a grandchild. As tension in the household rises, it becomes harder for Song Yan to keep her usual placid demeanor, especially since she is troubled by dreams of a doorless room she can't escape, populated only by a strange orange mushroom.When a parcel of mushrooms native to her mother-in-law's province is delivered seemingly by mistake, Song Yan sees an opportunity to bond with her, and as the packages continue to arrive every week, the women stir-fry and grill the mushrooms, adding them to soups and noodles. When a letter arrives in the mail from the sender of the mushrooms, Song Yan's world begins to tilt further into the surreal. Summoned to an uncanny, seemingly ageless house hidden in a hutong that sits in the middle of the congested city, she finds Bai Yu, a once world-famous pianist who disappeared ten years ago.A gorgeous and atmospheric novel of art and expression, grief and survival, memory and self-discovery, Ghost Music animates contemporary Beijing through the eyes of a lonely yet hopeful young woman and gives vivid color and texture to the promise of new beginnings.

Ghost Music

From the celebrated author of Ghost Music and Braised Pork, a bewitching and atmospheric novel following two sisters in an isolated village as the sun begins to diminish above them.

In Five Poems Lake, a small village surrounded by impenetrable deserts, the sun is slowly disappearing overhead. A young woman keeps one apprehensive eye on the sky above as she tends the pharmacy of traditional medicine that belonged to her great grandfather. She has few customers, and even fewer visitors: her older sister Dong Ji, her last living relative, works at a wellness parlor across town for those who can afford it--which, during these strange and difficult days, is not many.

Five Poems Lake had fallen on hard times long before the sun began shrinking, but now, every few days, a new sliver disappears. As the temperature drops and the lake freezes over, the population of the town realizes that they will soon die--if not of the cold and starvation, then of despair. When the Beacons begin to appear--ordinary people with heads replaced by searing, blinding light, like miniature suns--the town's residents wonder if they may hold the answer to their salvation, or if they are just another sign of impending ruin. A photograph belonging to their father, who died mysteriously twelve years ago, may offer a clue in the mystery of the Beacons, and Dong Ji and her sister wonder if they may finally learn what happened to their father.

With a richly surreal sensibility that has earned comparisons to the work of Haruki Murakami, and anchored by searching curiosity and wisdom, in Sunbirth An Yu honors the unique relationship held between sisters and asks how much we can ever know about the deepest mysteries of the world.

Sunbirth

Des mondes flottants... Un premier roman intense et onirique qui évoque les films de Wong Kar-Wai et les romans de Murakami. Un matin d'automne, Jia Jia pousse la porte de la salle de bains de son opulent appartement de Pékin et découvre son mari sans vie dans la baignoire. Il a laissé pour elle, sur le lavabo, le dessin énigmatique d'un homme poisson. Cette étrange figure aquatique ne cessera dès lors de la hanter. Perdue et sous le choc, Jia Jia déambule dans la ville, boit plus que de raison, et noue peu à peu une relation avec un barman, Leo, susceptible de lui donner l'amour qu'elle croyait impossible. Libérée d'un mariage asphyxiant, Jia Jia se redécouvre, renoue avec sa passion pour la peinture et affronte son passé et toutes ces choses que ceux qu'elle aime ont trop longtemps tues. Une odyssée intérieure qui la mènera jusqu'aux plateaux du Tibet et cet autre monde auquel elle aspire et qui la terrifie.

An Yu

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