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Braised Pork

Braised Pork

Summary

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

Reviews

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

About the author

An Yu

An Yu was born and raised in Beijing, and left at the age of eighteen to study in New York at NYU. A graduate of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, she writes her fiction in English. She is twenty-six years old and lives between Paris and Hong Kong. Her debut novel, Braised Pork, was published by Harvill Secker in 2020.
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