A great book for a book club read with much to discuss in this tale of a young Chinese girl, Fusang, kidnapped from her homeland and forced in to prostitution in San Francisco. Her beauty and understated charm lead to a wealthy Californian falling in love with her and a violent gangster becoming obsessed with her. A moving and page-turning story.
Geling Yan traces the lives of two individuals separated by prejudice and mistrust, but bound forever by their passion for one another. Fusang is a Chinese girl shanghaied from her village in China, brought to California and sold into the seedy underworld of prostitution. Soon she falls into an obsessive relationship with a young boy, Chris. But many barriers are laid between the lovers - by Chris' wealthy family, and most menacingly by Fusang's murderous pimp, who bestrides Chinatown with a clutch of daggers at his waist.
Born in Shanghai to a writer and an actress, Geling Yan began writing in the late 1970s as a war correspondent covering the Sino-Vietnamese border conflicts. Her first novel was published in China in 1985. In 1989, following the massacre at Tiananmen Square, she left China for the United States. Since then, two of her works have been made into films and a collection of her short fiction was translated into English. She has won many awards, both in China and the USA. She now lives in San Francisco.
