From the award-winning author of Lucky Girls comes an intricately woven novel about secrets, love, art, identity and the shining chaos of everyday American life. Yuan Zho, a celebrated Chinese performance artist and political dissident, has accepted a one year's artist's residency in Los Angeles. He is to be a Visiting Scholar at the St Anselm's School for Girls, teaching advanced art, and hosted by one of the school's most devoted families: the wealthy if dysfunctional Traverses. The Traverses are too preoccupied with their own problems to pay their foreign guest much attention, and the dissident is delighted to be left alone -- his past links with the radical movements give him good reason to avoid careful scrutiny. The trouble starts when he and his American hosts begin to view one another with clearer eyes. 'Freudenberger is most certainly the genuine article.' Guardian 'Freudenberger's novel unfolds into that rare thing, a work of poetics itself, a medication in art. The fact that she does it with such wit and compassion, such generosity of mind and heart, is miraculous.' T he Times 'A fiercely intelligent first novel ...Lots of sharp, funny dialogue, it has something of a Lost in Translation feel.
' Eve Magazine 'Written in prose as clear as birdsong, the novel grips from first to last.' Scotland on Sunday
- ISBN10 0330493442
- ISBN13 9780330493444
- Publish Date 21 March 2008 (first published 15 August 2006)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 25 April 2013
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Imprint Picador
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 432
- Language English