Ghost Music

For three years Song Yan has filled her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. 
 
She finds herself adrift, but her husband seems reluctant for a child of their own. It takes the arrival of her mother-in-law, together with sudden strange parcels and stranger dreams, to shake Song Yan from her malaise. Summoned to an ancient house in the heart of the city, can she find the notes she needs to make sense of the pain and beauty in her life? 
 
'There's something here of early Murakami's graceful, open-ended approach to the uncanny... Ghost Music is an evocative exploration of what it means to live fully' New York Times Book Review 
 
'Knits together music and life to touch on something profound' Guardian

An intriguing book that knits together music and life to touch on something profound

Vivid descriptions of contemporary Beijing ... Yu writes in clear, unadorned prose and deftly threads the magic-realist elements through the main narrative

Transporting, searching and poetic

This playful, often surreal novel packs in plenty ... an elusive tale, steeped in atmosphere

Ghost Music has beautiful prose and claustrophobic imagery that intensely evokes its protagonist's alienation

Spellbinding and atmospheric . . . With its quiet, dreamy bending of reality and its precise depiction of many different strains of alienation, Ghost Music is an evocative exploration of what it means to live fully-and the potential consequences of failing to do so. Yu braids the mundane and the magical together with a gentle hand . . . There's something here of early Murakami's graceful, open-ended approach to the uncanny, as well as the vivid yet muted emotionality of Patrick Modiano or Katie Kitamura. Like these skillful portraitists of alienation, Yu conjures a visceral inbetweenness where the worlds of matter and spirit meet in a shared, suspended space

An Yu was born and raised in Beijing. She left at the age of eighteen to study in New York City. A graduate of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, she writes her fiction in English and lives in Hong Kong. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Braised Pork and Ghost Music.

For three years Song Yan has filled her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. She finds herself adrift, but her husband seems reluctant for a child of their own. It takes the arrival of her mother-in-law, together with sudden strange parcels and stranger dreams, to shake Song Yan from her malaise. Summoned to an ancient house in the heart of the city, can she find the notes she needs to make sense of the pain and beauty in her life?

Braised Pork

Contemporary Beijing comes alive in the hands of a young literary star

An elegant, dreamlike tale of a woman’s self-realisation in contemporary Beijing. Yu’s writing has an arresting, unadorned lyricism

A seductive, sharply observed tale of love, loss and hope that moves from high-rise Beijing to rural Tibet and the mysterious, magical ‘world of water’

A startlingly original imagination... Braised Pork is a sensitive portrait of alienated young womanhood as it is set free

Rich and strange … Braised Pork is a debut that gets under your skin

Braised Pork is mesmerising, incisive and utterly disarming. An Yu writes beautifully about loneliness, the experience of isolation — from others, from one’s own past — and the possibility of human connection, however fragile.

So elegant and poised, so tuned to the great mysteries of love and loss. Like a breeze on a still day, An Yu’s is a voice I didn't know I needed until I felt it. Braised Pork is a major debut

Bold yet understated, Braised Pork is the debut of a supremely confident and gifted writer.

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.

Yu’s novel has a cool, poised elegance that only adds to its enigmatic allure

A dizzying read… An Yu writes with style and in a way that is hard to resist

Richly associative, the book’s imagery insinuates itself into the reader’s consciousness long after it’s finished

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.

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.

Bold yet understated, Braised Pork is the debut of a supremely confident and gifted writer.'

The dreamlike story of a young woman in contemporary Beijing forging a different life for herself, from one of our brightest new literary stars. 
 
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 on a journey. It takes her deep into her past where, for the very first time, she begins to have a sense of her future. 
 
'Startlingly original... A portrait of alienated young womanhood as it is set free' Guardian 
 
'Rich and wild...it gets under your skin' Observer 
 
'An Yu writes with style and in a way that is hard to resist' Sunday Times 
 
'A seductive, sharply observed tale of love, loss and hope' Daily Mail

An Yu

Evocative... vibrant despite a mounting sense of loss... thrilling and unexpected

An arresting story . . . Confirms Yu’s mastery of the mesmerizing and strange

Yu’s new book abounds with evocative images and haunting moral choices

Enthralling and surreal . . . an illuminating novel about what people choose to preserve at the end of the world

Dizzying . . expertly deploying speculative elements to examine identity, grief and existential longing with sublime emotional impact . . . richly atmospheric . . . Sunbirth is a surreal masterpiece to ponder with pleasure

Offers elements of magical realism and explores themes of sisterhood and grief while it unfolds an unusual premise . . . Yu excels at creating the setting, described in precise detail, and at crafting a character-driven reading experience

In Five Poems Lake, a small village surrounded by impenetrable deserts, the sun is slowly disappearing overhead. A young woman keeps an apprehensive eye on the sky above as she tends her family’s pharmacy of traditional medicine. She has few customers, and even fewer visitors. Her father was found dead by the lake twelve years ago, in unexplained circumstances. Her elder sister, Dong Ji, works at a wellness parlour across town for those who can afford it – which, during these strange and difficult days, is not many. 
 
The town fell on hard times long before the sun began to shrink, but now, every few days, a new sliver disappears. As the temperature drops and the lake freezes over, the inhabitants of the town realise that there is no way they can survive. But when the Beacons appear – ordinary people with heads replaced by searing, blinding light, like miniature suns – the residents wonder if they may hold the answer to their salvation, or if they are just another sign of impending ruin. Soon, Dong Ji and her sister will uncover a photograph which may offer a clue in the mystery of the Beacons, and finally help them learn what happened to their father. 
 
Sunbirth honours the unique relationship between sisters, their love for each other and their desire to be free. Richly surreal and anchored by searching curiosity and wisdom, it asks how much we can ever know about the deepest mysteries of the world.

An Yu

Praise for Sunbirth

Evocative... vibrant despite a mounting sense of loss... thrilling and unexpected

An arresting story . . . Confirms Yu’s mastery of the mesmerizing and strange

Yu’s new book abounds with evocative images and haunting moral choices

Evocative... vibrant despite a mounting sense of loss... thrilling and unexpected

An arresting story . . . Confirms Yu’s mastery of the mesmerizing and strange

Yu’s new book abounds with evocative images and haunting moral choices

Evocative... vibrant despite a mounting sense of loss... thrilling and unexpected

An arresting story . . . Confirms Yu’s mastery of the mesmerizing and strange

Yu’s new book abounds with evocative images and haunting moral choices

Books by An Yu

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