ACCOMPLISHED AUTHOR: This poignant novel is the third work of fiction from emerging Chinese author and winner of the 2025 Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction Ruyan Meng, whose novella Only the Cat Knows won the 2020 Red Hen Press Novella Award
QUEER LOVE UNDER CHINESE LAW: Piece by intimate piece, Ruyan Meng unspools the story of Lian Li and Zai Tian, two men who build a tender, unspoken connection over twenty-five years-through famine, the loss of their families, and forced labor in a Chinese railway camp-and their quiet refusal to surrender each other, even in a society where it could sentence them to prison or death
STUNNING HISTORICAL FICTION: From the weathered facades of shuttered theaters and the pits of the labor camp to the intricacy of buttons on a worn winter coat, Meng summons post-Revolution China to the page in all its brashness and brutality, a must-read for historical fiction fans and readers of Ha Jin, Lisa See, and Liu Cixin
