This is the kind of historical novel I love – it’s a decades-spanning family saga that builds on the author’s own family history. In this debut novel, Fu tells a story that parallels that of her father, who is born in China during the Japanese War of Aggression in the 1940s and the Chinese Civil…
I really enjoyed Lucy Tan’s debut novel about a family living in modern-day Shanghai. Wei, Lina and their teenage daughter Karen are a wealthy family living in a luxurious “serviced” apartment, that have recently moved from America to Shanghai. The story is told from their perspective, as well as that of their cleaner, Sunny. Through Sunny’s…
For the fifth anniversary of The Book Stop, I wanted to follow up with some of the authors who asked me to review their books. The authors I chose wrote books that really stood out — not only for the quality of the writing, but because there was something unique about the story told. The…
The Good Earth was written by Pearl S. Buck in 1931. It received the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. It tells the story of Wang Lung, a poor farmer in a small Chinese village in the early 1900s. He marries a slave woman in the wealthy House of…
Yesterday I posted a review of Descent, a compelling debut novel by C.H. Zhu. I interviewed Zhu because I wanted to learn more about this book and how he came to write it. What inspired you to write this story? What parts of the story come from your own life? The character, Dr. Wu, first…
C.H. Zhu’s first novel, Descent, is a story about a young man from China who struggles with his sexual identity and the weight of his parents’ expectations. While Dr. Wu Rong has built a successful career as a scientist, he cannot come to terms with the fact that he’s gay, and what that will mean…
The Book Stop 