The Fortunes

(Hardback)

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Ah Ling: son of a prostitute and a white 'ghost', dispatched from Hong Kong as a boy to make his way alone in 1860s California.

Anna Mae Wong: the first Chinese film star in Hollywood, forbidden to kiss a white man on screen.

Vincent Chin: killed by a pair of Detroit auto workers in 1982 simply for looking Japanese.

John Ling Smith: a half-Chinese writer visiting China for the first time, to adopt a baby girl.

Inspired by three figures who lived at pivotal moments in Chinese-American history, and drawing on his own mixed-race experience, Peter Ho Davies plunges us into what it is like to feel, and be treated, like a foreigner in the country you call home.

Ranging from the mouth of the Pearl River to the land of golden opportunity, this remarkable novel spans 150 years to tell a tale of familial bonds denied and fragmented, of tenacity and pride, of prejudice and the universal need to belong.

Reviews

PRAISE FOR THE WELSH GIRL:

Moving, memorable and beautifully written - Sunday Telegraph

Deeply felt and vividly imagined - Daily Telegraph

Fresh and engaging . . . Some sentences and passages are crafted so beautifully and seemingly effortlessly that it provokes envy. - Sunday Express

Quietly powerful . . . a fine piece of work - Times Literary Supplement

His prose and the evocation of time and place are almost always of the highest order . . . he approaches the Second World War with a fresh and contemporary style, a gift that he shares with Kazuo Ishiguro - The Times

A scintillating instance of fictional imagination applied to history - New York Times

Impressive . . . a compelling story in itself, but Davies's special skill lies in integrating conflicts that drive the narrative at a more intense level - Independent

Author Bio

Peter Ho Davies's novel THE WELSH GIRL was published by Sceptre in 2007, when it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It was also a Richard & Judy Book Club choice and was shortlisted for the R & J Best Read at the British Book Awards. His first short story collection, THE UGLIEST HOUSE IN THE WORLD (1997), won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the PEN/Macmillan Prize, while his second, EQUAL LOVE (2000), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a New York Times Notable Book. In 2003 , he was chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and was a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award in 2008.

Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, Davies now lives in the US, where he is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. He is married with one son.