Lydia Kwa

"This Place Called Absence is a lush and intricately layered novel that interweaves the lives of four women, spanning time between the early twentieth century and modern day. Wu Lan is a contemporary woman--a psychologist now living in Vancouver who grew up in Singapore. She is on a leave of absence from her work, trying to come to terms with her father's suicide. Mahmee, Wu Lan's mother who is still living in Singapore, is haunted by the ghost of her dead husband, Yen. Her voice is suspended between the worlds of the living and the dead. Yen visits Wu Lan as well. His ghost drives her to seek knowledge in new places--including library texts--to learn more about her past and to try to understand him better. The other two women are voices from the past, young ah ku who worked in the brothels in Singapore. Their tale of resilience and passion is riveting. Lee Ah Choi was sold into prostitution by her father and supports her family at home, while Chow Chat Mui was lured into the sex trade after she ran away from her Chinese homeland to escape her father's sexual abuse. Meeting by chance, the two women give each other love, strength and hope as they help each other to survive their brutal circumstances. This is not enough to dampen their deepening sense of despair, however, and both Ah Choi and Chat Mui fall under the powerful spell of opium. Kwa transports us between the past and present, merging tradition and modern life in a way that is reminiscent of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. This is a heart-breaking tale of despair and hope and the transformational power of the imagination." --PUBLISHER

The Walking Boy is a quest novel set in early eighth-century Tang Dynasty China, in the final days of the rule of the first Female Emperor Wu Zhao. The ailing hermit monk Harelip sends his disciple Baoshi on a pilgrimage from Mount Hua to Chang'an, the Western capital; Baoshi is the "walking boy" charged with locating Harelip's missing former lover Ardhanari. Baoshi lives with a secret only his Master knows, and he is filled with fears of being discovered. On his journey, Baoshi crosses paths with both commoners and imperial officials, as well as others who take delight in their queer identities; in doing so, he is released powerfully from his past shame. The Walking Boy, set in the years following Kwa's novel Oracle Bone, is a book of quiet subversion, upending classical Chinese tropes with contemporary ideas around gender and feminism. Filled with psychological complexities, magic and poetic allusions to classical Chinese literature, The Walking Boy explores the intrigue of inner alchemy while exorcising the ghosts of history.