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Yellowface: A Novel

ljudbok


INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ‱ A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK

“Hard to put down, harder to forget.” — Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author

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.


UpplÀsare: Helen Laser
LĂ€ngd:

4.0

552 recensioner

Matilda

2024-03-17

I was really not planning on reading this, as the plotline with an author stealing her dead friend's manuscript and publishing it as her own felt very stressful to me. But as the positive reviews kept on piling up, I thought I would give it a try after all. And I'm very happy I did! This book is well-written, fast-paced, and entertaining. I especially liked that it posed many interesting questions around the publishing industry - how certain authors (arbitrarily) deemed to have commercial potential get so much attention, while many other writers are left to fend for themselves - and how we approach issues around diversity, representation, and explotation/appropriation. I also enjoyed how the main character throughout the book try to make peace with her friendship with the woman she stole the manuscript from, and how the book allowed it to be a complex relationship where memories from the past showed that they both supported and used each other at times. But sometimes those relationships are the hardest to figure out. Or as said in the book: "Only the dead can be so constantly present." [3.5 ☆]

Sanna

2024-01-17

Bok om bokbranschen om stöld inom branschen och hur hÄrt vi gÄr pÄ varandra i digital media. Bra? Ok. UnderhÄllande? Ja. Har sina poÀnger.

Zanni

2023-08-07

Very well written. It was so easy to listen too and hard to put down