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Four Treasures of the Sky: A Novel Kindle Edition
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK · A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE · REVIEWED ON THE FRONT COVER · INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
“Zhang’s blend of history and magical realism will appeal to fans of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer as well as Amy Tan's The Valley of Amazement.” —Booklist (starred review)
"Engrossing...Epic" (The New York Times Book Review) · "Transporting" (Washington Post) · "Propulsive" (Oprah Daily) · "Surreal and sprawling" (NPR) · "An absolute must-read" (BuzzFeed) · "Radiant" (BookPage)
A dazzling debut novel set against the backdrop of the Chinese Exclusion Act, about a Chinese girl fighting to claim her place in the 1880s American West
Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been—including the ones she most wants to leave behind—in order to finally claim her own name and story.
At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFlatiron Books
- Publication dateApril 5, 2022
- File size1803 KB
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From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Review
"Jenny Tinghui Zhang uses her considerable talents to illuminate the shocking injustices the Chinese in this country suffered in the 1800s, and in doing so, makes us stop and consider how much of that cruelty and injustice survive to this day. Four Treasures of the Sky is an engulfing, bighearted, and heartbreaking novel."
--Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House
"An astonishing novel propelled by private and public histories, rich with reflections on self-making, moral calling, great love, and profound injustice. Jenny Tinghui Zhang's writing enthralled me--it is as honed as a needle and as gorgeous as calligraphy."
--Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
"An exhilarating rush of character, history, and storytelling. This novel of the American West illuminates the horrific realities of the Chinese Exclusion act of the 1880s. With unforgettable characters, resiliency, and poetic lyricism, Jenny Tinghui Zhang takes her readers on an unforgettable adventure. This carefully researched novel dazzles."
--Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of Sabrina & Corina
"Brilliant and devastating, Four Treasures of the Sky tells the story of Daiyu, who is brought to America against her will and forced to hide who she is even as she grows into her true self. Weaving together myth and history, Zhang's work is both timeless and utterly necessary right now."
--Anna North, author of Outlawed
"In a sweeping adventure that spans China and the American West, Jenny Tinghui Zhang has crafted a thoughtful story of identity, love, and belonging."
--C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold
"A revelation and a haunting, Four Treasures of the Sky is an instant and necessary classic, easily among the best novels of this decade. Jenny Tinghui Zhang is a sorcerer of words, weaving adventure, a fully realized history, and a story that lingers long after its final images. A true wonder."
--T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
"Jenny Tinghui Zhang captures the adventure, the isolation, the violence, and the glittering hope of the American West. The author's fine attention to historical and human detail has allowed her to bring alive a heroine for the ages, an indomitable teenage girl whose relentless spirit and self-reinvention carries this story. Daiyu is sure to take her place in the canon of great Western heroines next to True Grit's Mattie Ross."
--Juliet Grames, author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
"To say Four Treasures of the Sky is unflinching doesn't do justice to the miraculous way in which Jenny Tinghui Zhang paints a neglected chapter in American history with sharp and devastating brushstrokes. This book is haunting, luscious, and precise--it's historical fiction as we most want and need it to be."
--Julia Fine, author of The Upstairs House and What Should Be Wild
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B08PSDCR4L
- Publisher : Flatiron Books (April 5, 2022)
- Publication date : April 5, 2022
- Language : English
- File size : 1803 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 321 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #18,971 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Jenny Tinghui Zhang is a Texas-based Chinese-American writer who holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Wyoming (where she wrote the popular Catapult column Why-oming) and is an alumna of the 2016 VONA/Voices, Tin House Summer 2019 & Winter 2020 Workshops. Jenny is a prose editor at Adroit Journal and has written nonfiction for The Cut, Bustle, Huffington Post, and HelloGiggles; her fiction has appeared in Ninth Letter, Passages North, CALYX, The Rumpus, and more.
Customer reviews
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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This story is a bildungsroman, a 19th-century Chinese girl's journey into adulthood, and her struggle to become the best person she can be at a time when being a girl was a burden in itself. (And still is.)
When disaster strikes and she is kidnapped, she is dispatched to San Francisco and into a new world of suffering and growth. She is not alone. She is inhabited by a tragic ghost with the same name, while she inhabits a series of false names--Feng, Peony, and Jacob--each one demanding that she disguise the self that her loving parents named Daiyu.
The writing is persuasive and lyrical and Daiyu's account of learning English is exquisite, but the narrative does sometimes threaten to overwhelm the reader's ability to suspend disbelief. For example, for several days, Daiyu maintains her male persona in a jail cell with four men and an open bucket.
Despite the protagonist's ongoing cross-dressing which doesn't always ring true, I recommend this tale not only for its artistry but also for its searing "teaching moments" about historical and contemporary prejudice.
Top reviews from other countries
(Spoiler)
What was bugging me the whole time is how the main character pretended to be a boy/man and wasn't discovered by the people around even when locked up with them in the same jail cell with the common bucket. Really?