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Your next favorite book
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by Zhang Ling
The eagerly awaited English translation of award-winning author Zhang Ling's epic and intimate novel about the devastation of war, forgiveness, redemption, and the enduring power of love.
On the day of the historic 1945 Jewel Voice Broadcast―in which Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender to the Allied forces, bringing an end to World War II―three men, flush with jubilation, made a pact. After their deaths, each year on the anniversary of the broadcast, their souls would return to the Chinese village of their younger days. It's where they had fought―and survived―a war that shook the world and changed their own lives in unimaginable ways. Now, seventy years later, the pledge is being fulfilled by American missionary Pastor Billy, brash gunner's mate Ian Ferguson, and local soldier Liu Zhaohu.
All that's missing is Ah Yan―also known as Swallow―the girl each man loved, each in his own profound way.
As they unravel their personal stories of the war, and of the woman who touched them so deeply during that unforgiving time, the story of Ah Yan's life begins to take shape, woven into view by their memories. A woman who had suffered unspeakable atrocities, and yet found the grace and dignity to survive, she'd been the one to bring them together. And it is her spark of humanity, still burning brightly, that gives these ghosts of the past the courage to look back on everything they endured and remember the woman they lost.
"As a writer of perception and sensitivity, Zhang teases out the many layers of the devastating weight that the war had been putting on the individual, especially women…creates gripping suspense…In a unique narrative style, A Single Swallow compels readers to reflect on innocence and humanity through the prism of war." —Chinese Literature Today
"Themes of gender, memory, and trauma are woven throughout the narrative…the story is not just about friendship; it is also about one woman, a single swallow, who changes the lives of three men forever." —World Literature Today
This information about A Single Swallow was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Zhang Ling is the award-winning author of nine novels and numerous collections of novellas and short stories. Born in China, she moved to Canada in 1986. In the mid-1990s, she began to write and publish fiction in Chinese while working as a clinical audiologist. Since then she has won the Chinese Media Literature Award for Author of the Year, the Grand Prize of Overseas Chinese Literary Award, and Taiwan's Open Book Award. Among Zhang Ling's work are Gold Mountain Blues and Aftershock, adapted into China's first IMAX movie with unprecedented box-office success.
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