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My Other Heart

My Other Heart

Summary

May 1998: Mimi Traung and her baby daughter Ngan wait restlessly at the gates of Philadelphia airport. There is still a day’s travelling left before they would land back home on Vietnamese soil. While they prepare to board, the unimaginable happens.

Seventeen years later, two best friends are discussing their summer plans before college over a piece of mooncake. Both have trips ahead in search of their roots: Sabrina is preparing to travel to China to meet her mother’s family. Kit leaves for Tokyo, convinced that her biological mother is Japanese. Their parents watch on from the quiet suburbs of Chestnut Hill, nervous of what their daughters might find.

Meanwhile, Mimi returns to Philadelphia in search of her lost child, tracing memories from that fateful day waiting at the gates. Each of these women are looking to find their place in the world. Eventually Mimi, Kit and Sabrina come face to face, and have to confront the people they truly are, dismantling their own assumptions about belonging and the importance of blood ties.

About the author

Emma Nanami Strenner

Emma Nanami Strenner has been a journalist for over twenty years. She has written for VOGUE International, ELLE, Stylist Magazine, Condé Nast Traveller and The Times. Emma is British Japanese and studied at the University of Leeds. She completed the Curtis Brown Creative Six-Month Novel Writing Course and is also a Faber Academy Alumni. She has spent much of her life living abroad in Japan, Vietnam, Australia, China, Singapore and the US. She currently lives in London. My Other Heart is her first novel.
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