The Fortunes

Author: Peter Ho Davies

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $23.00 AUD
  • : 9780340980255
  • : Hodder & Stoughton
  • : Sceptre
  • : May 2017
  • : 22.99
  • : April 2017
  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Peter Ho Davies
  • : Paperback
  • :
  • :
  • :
Barcode 9780340980255
9780340980255

Description

Ah Ling: son of a prostitute and a white 'ghost', dispatched from Hong Kong as a boy to make his way alone in 1860s California. Anna Mae Wong: the first Chinese film star in Hollywood, forbidden to kiss a white man on screen. Vincent Chin: killed by a pair of Detroit auto workers in 1982 simply for looking Japanese.John Ling Smith: a half-Chinese writer visiting China for the first time, to adopt a baby girl.Inspired by three figures who lived at pivotal moments in Chinese-American history, and drawing on his own mixed-race experience, Peter Ho Davies plunges us into what it is like to feel, and be treated, like a foreigner in the country you call home.Ranging from the mouth of the Pearl River to the land of golden opportunity, this remarkable novel spans 150 years to tell a tale of familial bonds denied and fragmented, of tenacity and pride, of prejudice and the universal need to belong.

Author description

Peter Ho Davies's novel THE WELSH GIRL was published by Sceptre in 2007, when it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It was also a Richard & Judy Book Club choice and was shortlisted for the R & J Best Read at the British Book Awards. His first short story collection, THE UGLIEST HOUSE IN THE WORLD (1997), won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the PEN/Macmillan Prize, while his second, EQUAL LOVE (2000), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a New York Times Notable Book. In 2003 , he was chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and was a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award in 2008.Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, Davies now lives in the US, where he is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. He is married with one son.