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In the tradition of Amy Tan and Jhumpa Lahiri, a moving portrait of three generations of family living in Vancouver's Chinatown. From Knopf Canada's New Face of Fiction program, launching grounds for Yann Martel's Life of Pi and Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees, comes this powerfully evocative novel.
At age eighteen, Seid Quan is the first in the Chan family to emigrate from China to Vancouver in 1913. Paving the way for a wife and son, he is profoundly lonely, even as he joins the Chinatown community.
Weaving in and out of the past and the present, The End of East pieces together the spellbinding tale of Seid Quan's family: his wife Shew Lin, whose hope for her family are threatened by her own misguided actions; his son Pon Man, who struggles with obligation and desire; his daughter-in-law Siu Sang, who tries to be the caregiver everyone expects, even as she feels herself unraveling, and his granddaughter Sammy, who finds herself embroiled in a volatile mixture of seduction, grief, and duty.
An exquisite debut of isolation, immigration, romance, and insanity, The End of East sets family conflicts against the backdrop of Vancouver's Chinatown-a city within a city where dreams are shattered as quickly as they're built, and where history repeats itself through the generations. It is a bold and accomplished debut from one of Canada's brightest new literary stars.
At age eighteen, Seid Quan is the first in the Chan family to emigrate from China to Vancouver in 1913. Paving the way for a wife and son, he is profoundly lonely, even as he joins the Chinatown community.
Weaving in and out of the past and the present, The End of East pieces together the spellbinding tale of Seid Quan's family: his wife Shew Lin, whose hope for her family are threatened by her own misguided actions; his son Pon Man, who struggles with obligation and desire; his daughter-in-law Siu Sang, who tries to be the caregiver everyone expects, even as she feels herself unraveling, and his granddaughter Sammy, who finds herself embroiled in a volatile mixture of seduction, grief, and duty.
An exquisite debut of isolation, immigration, romance, and insanity, The End of East sets family conflicts against the backdrop of Vancouver's Chinatown-a city within a city where dreams are shattered as quickly as they're built, and where history repeats itself through the generations. It is a bold and accomplished debut from one of Canada's brightest new literary stars.
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Reviews
"The truth that imbues every line of Jen Sookfong Lee's The End of East is so coruscating that we must look away. And yet she will not let us, and so we cannot."
Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean
"An emotional powerhouse of a novel...calls to mind Ishiguro's Booker Prize winner The Remains of the Day. This is a book that can sit on a shelf of novels by Ondaatje, Atwood, and Laurence."
Halifax Chronicle Herald
"An impressive debut novel...delivered in lyrical language radiating with apt metaphors. Evocative...an enrapturing exploration of identity that proves that family is unshakeable."
Kirkus Reviews