Fabulous Fiction Firsts #629

Beijing journalist Lijia Zhang's debut novel Lotus is inspired by her grandmother's deathbed revelation that she was sold into prostitution at an early age.

Set in contemporary Shenzhen, China’s “City of Sins”, Lotus is one of the "ji" (Chinese word for chicken, a derogatory name for prostitutes) working at the Moonflower Massage Parlor. Originally from a impoverished village in northern China, she allows her family to think she waitresses in an upscale restaurant, sending her earnings home to support her family and to send her younger brother to university.

Knowing the shelf life of someone in her situation is finite, Lotus casts her eye among her regulars -- Funny Eye, Family Treasure -- hoping for a more permanent arrangement. In the meantime, she befriends Hu Binbing, a quiet and reclusive photojournalist who is hoping his documentary project on the lives of the "ji" will bring him the deserved recognition. But once his photographs of Lotus are published in a national magazine, his standing in the Communist party as well as their relationship is threatened.

"'A Newborn Calf Isn't Afraid of Tigers' is a typical chapter title in Lotus... Readers will find the entire text rich in Chinese proverbs, as well as folk wisdom of a more prosaic variety. Characters employ sage sayings in spoken form, as a kind of parlor game, and the author scatters aphorisms liberally throughout the narrative, with an effect that is both charming and thought-provoking....Some first novels, especially those birthed in creative writing classes, go heavy on self-consciously poetic language ...The images Zhang gives us, in contrast, are uncomplicated, concise and touching" (NPR)

"Pretty Woman but without all the glitz" (Library Journal).

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #630

The Woman Next Door, the U.S. debut of Yewande Omotoso is "an intimate, frequently hilarious look at the lives of two extraordinary women set in post-apartheid South Africa." (Booklist)

Nicknamed each other "Hortensia the Horrible" and "Marion the Vulture", these prickly octogenarians have been next-door neighbors for over two decades in Cape Town's upscale Katterijn community. Seeing beyond the obvious (one is black and one is white), they have a lot in common. Both are successful women with impressive careers. Opinionated, widowed and living alone, they both take a keen interest in community affairs, often the source of their friction.

When an unexpected event impacts both of their well-being, Hortensia and Marion are forced to take tiny steps toward civility. With conversations over time, each reflecting upon choices made, dreams deferred, and lost chances at connection, these proud, feisty women must decide whether to expend waning energy on their feud or call a truce.

Born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria, Omotoso won the South African Literary Award in 2011 for her debut novel, Bom Boy. In 2013 she was a finalist for the inaugural, pan-African Etisalat Fiction Prize. She lives in Johannesburg, where she has her own architectural practice. Listen to the NPR podcast with the author.

"Like Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, which also depicts the wisdom found in aging, this novel will have universal appeal." (Library Journal)

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #631

Borrowing the title from one of Dostoyevsky's famous novel, Elif Batuman's debut novel The Idiot * * * is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale, set in 1995, that "delightfully captures the hyperstimulation and absurdity of the first-year university experience." (Library Journal)

Selin Karada, daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard eager and open to new experiences. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, and is intrigued with email, newly available on campus. In Russian class, Selin is befriended by Svetlana, a cosmopolitan Serb and, almost by accident, begins exchanging email with Ivan, a senior from Hungary. With each email they exchange, her feelings for Ivan intensifies, even knowing that he has a serious girlfriend.

At the end of the school year, after spending two weeks in Paris with Svetlana, Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside to teach English, hoping to meet up with Ivan on weekends, where the unfamiliar language gives rise to a succession of seemingly random but mild misadventures with her various host families.

“Selin is delightful company. She’s smart enough to know the ways in which she is dumb, and her off-kilter relationship to the world around her is revelatory and, often, mordantly hilarious... Self-aware, cerebral, and delightful.” (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Elif Batuman, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor. She is a graduate of Harvard College and holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University.

* * * = 3 starred reviews

Related:
➥ Fabulous Fiction Firsts, full archive