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4.0 

Yellowface

By R. F. Kuang
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel. 

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable. 

16 Reviews

4.0

Thinking Face““the truth is fluid. there is always another way to spin the story, another wrench to throw into the narrative.” one can always undermine all assertions, ascribe new motivations, and alter the sequence of events. a new account can be compelling precisely because it aligns with what the audience, deep down, wants to believe. one of the many cruxes of Kong's work through this novel is the troubling flexibility of reality; of what reality is perceived as being. it was all very meta.”
Morally ambiguousMulti-layered charactersConciseDarkDescriptiveRealisticComicalDisturbingThought-provoking
Thinking Face
Morally ambiguousMulti-layered charactersConversationalEasy to readWitty banterAddictiveAngstyInsightfulThought-provokingUnsatisfying ending
Slightly Smiling Face
Believable charactersCharacters change and growDiverse backgroundsMorally ambiguousMulti-layered characters
Thumbs Up
Easy to readAddictiveBad editingPredictable plotUnlikable charactersUnsatisfying ending
Thumbs Up
Heroic figures

About R. F. Kuang

Rebecca F. Kuang is a Marshall Scholar, Chinese-English translator, and the Astounding Award-winning and the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of the Poppy War trilogy and the forthcoming Babel. Her work has won the Crawford Award and the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.

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