Description

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Set in modern China, February Flowers tells the stories of two young women's journeys to self-discovery and reconciliation with the past.

Seventeen-year-old Ming and twenty-four-year-old Yan have very little in common other than studying at the same college. Ming, idealistic and preoccupied, lives in her own world of books, music, and imagination. Yan, by contrast, is sexy but cynical, beautiful but wild, with no sense of home. When the two meet and become friends, Ming's world is forever changed. But their differences in upbringing and ideology ultimately drive them apart, leaving each to face her dark secret alone.

Insightful, sophisticated, and rich with complex characters, February Flowers captures a society torn between tradition and modernity, dogma and freedom. It is a meditation on friendship, family, love, loss, and redemption and how a background shapes a life.

About the Author

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Fan Wu grew up on a state-run farm in southern China, where her parents were exiled during the Cultural Revolution. Her debut novel, February Flowers, has been translated into eight languages, and her short fiction, besides being anthologized and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, has appeared in Granta, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Wu holds an M.A. from Stanford University and currently lives in Santa Clara, California. Please visit her website at www.fanwuwrites.com.

Praise For…

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"An exquisitely beautiful book about that uncertain border between girlhood and womanhood, between passion and desire, a country only too familiar to all women. Fan Wu's story swept me away." -- Sandra Cisneros, bestselling author of House on Mango Street

"Characters, plot, and Chinoiserie combine in a debut novel that shines...animated by unforgettable characters, and infused with emotional honesty, Fan Wu's first novel is moving, sexy, and impossible to put down. Her style is deceptively simple, her prose confident, clear and precise...a brilliant debut." --The Bulletin (Australia)

"An original and unforgettable story. Just like the flowers referred to in the title, Fan Wu's novel is brimming with passion, vitality, and hope. The girls in this book are the daughters and granddaughters of The Good Women of China, and are products of the society both modern, expansive, and communistically introvert." --Xinran, author of The Good Women of China

"A novel that takes us inside contemporary China by a keen-eyed Chinese writer who knows English inside-out." - Alan Cheuse, author of The Light Possessed and The Fires

"On its surface February Flowers is a swift coming of age tale about an obsessive friendship between opposites at a college in Guangzhou. Ming is shy, naïve, bookish and new to city life while Yan is bold, wild, magnetic and eager to corrupt. But beneath the surface tension and attraction between these two memorable young women is a story about contemporary China and the push and pull between tradition and modernity, communism and capitalism, constraint and freedom. Fan Wu is a gifted writer and a promising new voice, and her characters come alive in this wonderful debut novel." --Porter Shreve, author of Drives Like a Dream and The Obituary Writer

"Fan Wu quietly and unobtrusively conveys the seismic shifts that Chinese society has undergone in a matter of decades...this subtle and deftly paced novel is, ultimately, less a story about sexual awakening than sheer awakening..." -- The Observer (UK)

"A novel that turns its eye away from imagined audiences and keeps it trained on the story at hand...the ease with which it (the novel) shakes off the voiceover of memoir, with all its intonations of latterly won wisdom, and enters the past as it was lived, in real-time and without the props of hindsight. As compelling is the way in which the two friends become emblematic of China as it was then." -- Financial Times Book Review (UK)

"This first novel (February Flowers) commands our attention if we want to understand contemporary China...Yan is perhaps...the bipolar characteristics of contemporary China, and its unique brand of market Stalinism, modernity and tradition." --The Tablet (UK)

"Fresh and original..." -- The Age (Australia)

"A fresh, original work that strikes a fine balance between intimacy and restraint, and shatters several stereotypes along the way....The author's control of her subject matter is impressive, capturing perfectly the claustrophobia and obsessive passion that youthful friendships can assume...The novel's ultimate appeal, however, lies in the universality of its themes-the pain and pleasure of growing up, and the discovery of sex and the accompanying wonder and fear; few will not recall their own adolescent pangs while reading February Flowers." --The Asian Review of Books