The Fortunes

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.

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.

PRAISE FOR THE WELSH GIRL: Moving, memorable and beautifully written - Sunday Telegraph Deeply felt and vividly imagined - Daily Telegraph Fresh and engaging . . . Some sentences and passages are crafted so beautifully and seemingly effortlessly that it provokes envy. - Sunday Express Quietly powerful . . . a fine piece of work - Times Literary Supplement His prose and the evocation of time and place are almost always of the highest order . . . he approaches the Second World War with a fresh and contemporary style, a gift that he shares with Kazuo Ishiguro - The Times A scintillating instance of fictional imagination applied to history - New York Times Impressive . . . a compelling story in itself, but Davies's special skill lies in integrating conflicts that drive the narrative at a more intense level - Independent