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Braised Pork

Braised Pork

Summary

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CONTEMPORARY BEIJING FROM A YOUNG LITERARY STAR
‘So elegant and poised, so tuned to the great mysteries of love and loss. Braised Pork is a major debut’ -- John Freeman

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. Starting at her neighbourhood bar, fuelled by anger, bewilderment, curiosity and love, she travels from nocturnal Beijing to the high plains of Tibet, deep into her past in order to arrive at her future.

Cinematic, often dreamlike, Braised Pork is an exploration of myth-making, loss, and a world beyond words, which ultimately sees a young woman find a new and deeper sense of herself.

© An Yu 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

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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