From the PEN/Malamud Award-winning author of “Lucky Girls” comes a bold, intricately woven first novel about an enigmatic stranger who disrupts the life of one American family. Yuan Zhao, a celebrated Chinese performance artist and political dissident, has accepted a one year’s artist’s residency in Los Angeles. He is to be a Visiting Scholar at the St. Anselm’s School for Girls, teaching advanced art, and hosted by one of the school’s most devoted families: the wealthy if dysfunctional Traverses. But when their guest arrives, the Traverses are preoccupied with their own problems. Cece–devoted mother and contemporary art enthusiast–worries about the recent arrest of her son, Max. Unable to communicate with her husband, Gordon, a psychiatrist distracted by his passion for genealogical research, she turns to Gordon’s wayward brother, Phil. Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Olivia Travers is just relieved that her classmates seem to be ignoring the weird Chinese art teacher living in her pool house–at least until a brilliant but troublesome new student appears in his class.
The dissident, for his part, is delighted to be left alone. His relationship to the 1989 Democracy Movement and his past in a Beijing underground artists’ community together give him reason for not wanting to be scrutinized too carefully. The trouble starts when he and his American hosts begin to see one another with clearer eyes.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Anne Tyler
Jane Harris
Xiaolu Guo
Kiran Desai
Rachel Cusk
Nell Freudenberger
Melanie Wallace
Anne Tyler
Jane Smiley
Rachel Seiffert
Deborah Robertson
Stef Penney
Catherine O'Flynn
Lisa Moore
Lori Lansens
M.J. Hyland
Jane Harris
Xiaolu Guo
Rebecca Gowers
Margaret Forster
Patricia Ferguson
Kiran Desai
Rachel Cusk
Clare Allan
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Barbara Kingsolver
Ruth Ozeki
Susanna Clarke
Maggie O'Farrell
Tayari Jones
Kamila Shamsie
Naomi Alderman
Lisa McInerney
Ali Smith
Eimear McBride
A.M. Homes
Madeline Miller
Téa Obreht
Barbara Kingsolver
Marilynne Robinson
Rose Tremain
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Lionel Shriver
Andrea Levy
Valerie Martin
Ann Patchett
Kate Grenville
Linda Grant
Suzanne Berne
Carol Shields
Anne Michaels
Helen Dunmore
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