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.'

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.

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

Sunbirth

There's something here of early Murakami's graceful, open-ended approach to the uncanny... an evocative exploration of what it means to live fully

New York Times Book Review on GHOST MUSIC

An Yu

From the author of the stylish cult hit Braised Pork

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?

An Yu

Ghost Music

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