Ghost Music: From the author of the stylish cult hit Braised Pork

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A pianist in Beijing must find a way to the life she really wants, in this atmospheric new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Braised Pork For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. When she married, she gave up on her own career as a concert pianist, but her husband Bowen has long rebuffed her pleas to have a child. Instead, she must accommodate her mother-in-law, newly arrived from the province of Yunnan and bringing with her buried family secrets. Shortly after, strange parcels show up on the doorstep, Song Yan's dreams become troubling and claustrophobic, and she loses faith even in her teaching. Striking out alone through the winter city, she finds herself pulled into the ancient hutongs to confront the source, and perhaps the salvation, of her disquiet. In a still room in an ageless, ancient house, can she find the notes she needs to make sense of all the pain and beauty in her life A gorgeous and atmospheric novel of art and expression, grief and survival, memory and self-discovery, Ghost Music animates contemporary Beijing through the eyes of a lonely yet hopeful young woman and gives vivid colour and texture to the promise of new beginnings. Praise for Braised Pork- '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

Reviews

An intriguing book that knits together music and life to touch on something profound * Guardian *
Vivid descriptions of contemporary Beijing ... Yu writes in clear, unadorned prose and deftly threads the magic-realist elements through the main narrative * Financial Times *
Transporting, searching and poetic * List *
This playful, often surreal novel packs in plenty ... an elusive tale, steeped in atmosphere * Mail on Sunday *
Ghost Music has beautiful prose and claustrophobic imagery that intensely evokes its protagonist's alienation * New Statesman *

Author Bio

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.