Excess Male, An: A Novel

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One of the Washington Posts' "The 5 best science fiction and fantasy novels of 2017"!

James Tiptree, Jr Literary Award Honor List

A B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog "Best SFF of 2017" pick!

A Kirkus "Best of the Best!" of 2017 Honorable Mention

From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classics The Handmaid's Tale and When She Woke.

Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son.

Now 40 million of them can't find wives.none

noneChinas One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own. An Excess Male is one such leftover mans quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.

Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husbandthe maximum allowed by law. Only a single familyone harboring an illegal spouseshows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everythingwalls, streetlights, garbage cansare listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.

In Maggie Shen Kings startling and beautiful debut, An Excess Malelooks to explore the intersection of marriage, family, gender, and state in an all-too-plausible future.

Reviews

"Maggie Shen King has a great gift not only for creating a complicated, futuristic world but also for creating characters who win our hearts and minds. An Excess Male is a wonderfully inventive and wonderfully funny novel." -- Margot Livesey, author of Mercury and The Flight of Gemma Hardy "I found An Excess Male eerie and riveting. This brilliantly crafted dystopia brings to mind Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, but with its dire situation more probable and imminent. An Excess Male is a wonderful read, horrifying and humorous and bringing with it a warning." -- Heather Stallings, author of Click City, a novel serialized by the San Francisco Chronicle

Author Bio

Maggie Shen King grew up in Taiwan and attended both Chinese and American schools before moving to Seattle at age sixteen. She studied English literature at Harvard, and her short stories have appeared in Ecotone, ZYZZYVA, and Asimov's Science Fiction. Her manuscript Fortune's Fools, won Second Prize in Amazon's 2012 Breakthrough Novel Award. She lives near San Francisco, California.