-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Novel About Food, Family, and Finding Yourself
by Ann Mah
Paperback Original. Isabelle Lee thinks she knows everything about Chinese cuisine. After all, during her Chinese-American childhood, she ate it every day. Isabelle may speak only "kitchen Chinese"—the familial chatter learned at her mother's knee—but she understands the language of food. Now, in the wake of a career-ending catastrophe, she's ready for a change—so she takes off for Beijing to stay with her older sister, Claire, whom she's never really known, and finds a job writing restaurant reviews for an expat magazine. In the midst of her extreme culture shock, and the more she comes to learn about her sister's own secrets, Isabelle can't help but wonder whether coming to China was a mistake ... or an extraordinary chance to find out who she really is.
"[A] great start for a writer with much promise." - Publishers Weekly
This information about Kitchen Chinese 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.
Ann Mah is an author and journalist based in Paris, whose articles about food, travel, fashion, style,
and the arts have appeared in Condé Nast
Traveler, the International Herald Tribune, Washingtonian magazine, the South
China Morning Post, The Insider's Guide to
Beijing, and many other publications.
After graduating from UCLA in 1997, Ann began her
career in book publishing, eventually becoming an
assistant editor at Viking Penguin in New York. From
2003–07, she lived in Beijing, where she was a staff
writer and dining editor for That's Beijing,
an English-language entertainment magazine. In 2005,
she was awarded a James Beard culinary scholarship
to study Italian cuisine in Bologna, Italy.
If you liked Kitchen Chinese, try these:
by Ginny Tapley. Takemori
Published 2026
From the author of the bestselling literary sensations Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings comes a surprising and highly imaginative story set in a version of Japan where sex between married couples has vanished and all children are born by artificial insemination.
by Xochitl Gonzalez
Published 2025
New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death
by Carmen Maria Machado
Published 2020
A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties.
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home: but unlike charity, it should end there.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
