A radiant, intimate novel of the longing that blooms between two boys over the course of one summer���about family, desire, and what we inherit.
When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they’ve inherited, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought.
Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.
Out in the fields, and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members begin to confront their own secrets and regrets. Jack is a professor at a struggling local college whose failures might have begun when he married his student, Sui Ching. Sui Ching does her best to keep the family together, though she too wonders what her life could have been. And Fong, the manager, refuses to look at what is: at Chuan, at the land, at the global forces that threaten to render his whole life obsolete.
At once sweeping and compressed, Tash Aw’s The South is a family novel of change and desire—a story of what happens when public and private lives collide, told with uncommon grace and beauty.
Genre: Literary Fiction
When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they’ve inherited, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought.
Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.
Out in the fields, and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members begin to confront their own secrets and regrets. Jack is a professor at a struggling local college whose failures might have begun when he married his student, Sui Ching. Sui Ching does her best to keep the family together, though she too wonders what her life could have been. And Fong, the manager, refuses to look at what is: at Chuan, at the land, at the global forces that threaten to render his whole life obsolete.
At once sweeping and compressed, Tash Aw’s The South is a family novel of change and desire—a story of what happens when public and private lives collide, told with uncommon grace and beauty.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Tash Aw's The South is a mesmerizing tale of love, courage, and endurance. Like any significant novel, it's also infused with humor, longing, and other aspects of humanity too subtle and pervasive to be named by me. And, like any significant novel, it's both heartbreaking and joyful." - Michael Cunningham
"A sublime novel from one of the most important writers of our present." - Édouard Louis
"Tash Aw presents a world as timeless as the worlds brought to us by Turgenev and V. S. Naipaul, and yet catches the subtle and unstoppable changes each generation faces. Reflecting the human entanglements that come with home, land, and homeland, The South is a shimmeringly intelligent and elegiacally intimate novel." - Yiyun Li
"A sublime novel from one of the most important writers of our present." - Édouard Louis
"Tash Aw presents a world as timeless as the worlds brought to us by Turgenev and V. S. Naipaul, and yet catches the subtle and unstoppable changes each generation faces. Reflecting the human entanglements that come with home, land, and homeland, The South is a shimmeringly intelligent and elegiacally intimate novel." - Yiyun Li
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