Dear Chrysanthemums

A startling and vivid debut novel in stories from acclaimed poet and translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain featuring deeply compelling Asian women who reckon with the past, violence, and exile—set in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Paris, and New York.

Reviews

Praise for Dear Chrysanthemums 

"In nimble, evocative prose, these stories follow Chinese women from 1946 to 2016 as they brave moments of personal and national turmoil." —New York Times Book Review

“A haunting debut… At once brutal and tender, this novel of women’s lives has the power to move and complicate our understanding of the long shadow cast by revolution as well as the inextinguishable longing every person has for beauty, love, art, and selfhood.” —Asymptote

"Dear Chrysanthemums may be short at just 160 pages, but the unique structure of connecting the stories through the many decades of modern Chinese history and some of the same characters gives it the feel of a longer novel." —Asian Review of Books

“Attention to detail, especially with respect to numbers and music, is part of what makes the novel a joy to read… Sze-Lorrain pushes the boundaries of the Asian American novel into a global conversation... Dreamy and haunting...” —Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism

"Sze-Lorrain is to be praised for her ornate, intimate stories. Sze-Lorrain has a gift for capturing distinctive voices, and this shines through in all of her characters." —No Man is an Island 

"Provocative... In Dear Chrysanthemums, women try to free their bodies to be instruments of life as much as death, of self-expression as much as silence..." —Mekong Review

"In a novel that centers around the theme of erasure, the ‘white space’ between the lines, what is left unsaid or just alluded to, is where you’ll find the true story." —Reading Chinese Network Reviews

“Sze-Lorrain does not only shed light on the losses but also on the hypocritical nature of communist regimes. Perspectives on modern Chinese history like these are rare — and for a reason. A recommended read to those who wonder, but do not seek answers.” —Mochi Magazine

“Inventive and powerful… [a] stunning novel…” —Soapberry Review

“Elegant… Sze-Lorrain's lyrical writing suggests that rebellion, even if it has tragic consequences in the present, might bear fruit in the future through artistic expression.” —Shelf Awareness

“With shattering clarity, Sze-Lorrain teases apart the layers of complicity and survival that create a web of secrets, casting doubt on ever knowing the full truth behind each person’s story.” —Booklist

“Graceful… Sze-Lorrain effortlessly evokes the spirit of each setting, be it the ardent fervor of nationalism during the Chinese Civil War or the seedy glamor of a dive bar in Paris, and she imbues her characters with haunting melancholy as victims ‘doomed to the mishaps of verity and the equally hurtful edges of fiction.’ This author is one to watch.” —Publishers Weekly

"Sze-Lorrain excels in the lyrical mode as her attention to sensory observation illustrates how seemingly minor details such as the play of light from a shattered stained-glass window or the geometrically interlocking joints in a table can become microcosmic worlds if one knows how to look. Weaving these details together with an orchestral sensibility, the novel serves as a multilayered meditation on intergenerational trauma, memory, and resilience... By turns delicate and wild, this novel will linger like a chrysanthemum’s fragrance long after the last page." —Kirkus

“In Dear Chrysanthemums, Fiona Sze-Lorrain collects the shards of modern Chinese history and builds a prismatic, gorgeously intimate story of women who face impossible choices and losses in order to survive. Unflinching and haunting, the novel is a vivid portrayal of disillusionment and exile. Step by step, Sze-Lorrain constructs an intricate and deeply moving web that will leave you stunned by the end.” —Tsering Yangzom Lama, author of We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies, shortlisted for the 2022 Giller Prize

“How can a book be simultaneously so beautiful and so heartbreaking? Dear Chrysanthemums explores the repercussions of the major events of modern Chinese history—the Chinese civil war, the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square massacre—as they echo throughout lives in the diaspora. Sze-Lorrain’s storytelling is graceful yet fierce—this is an important novel about histories that have changed the world.”
—Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Green Island and Water Ghosts

"Dear Chrysanthemums weaves together the stories of Asian women whose lives are shaped, with and without their knowledge, by the storm of history and cultural upheaval. The political is always personal in this remarkable debut, in which the practice of art—dance, music, writing, even the art of cooking—is opposed to oppression, violence, loneliness, displacement, and death. With uncompromising detail, in language that is at once precise and evocative, author Sze-Lorrain takes us inside the individual struggles of her characters to reveal fascinating patterns of connection and hidden truth."
—Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The World of Pondside and The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia

"I read this book with my heart in my throat. Taken one by one, each of these delectable stories offers an intimate, sensuous portrait of the life of otherwise mysterious girls and women, their desires and obsessions and griefs. Taken as a whole, the novel is a heady, energetic, global mosaic that conveys just how deeply one human soul can relate to another."
—Susanna Daniel, author of Sea Creatures and Stiltsville

"Just beneath the precisely-rendered quotidian world of these linked narratives lies a fathomless well of menace. Given this, Sze-Lorrain seems to ask, what are life’s chances?"
—Frederick Turner, author of The Go-Between: A Novel of the Kennedy Years and 1929: A Novel of the Jazz Age

"Exquisite… Dear Chrysanthemums achieves the aesthetic ambitions of a novel with lyrical prose and imagery. Sze-Lorrain probes into our complex, volatile society, expressing her thought and lucidity."
—Ma Jian, author of China Dream, The Dark Road, and Beijing Coma