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Drawing inspiration from Asian myth, folklore and her own queer experience, the award-winning Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho will guide you from the mundane to the magical, to enchanted realms inhabited by dragons, vampires and incorrigible grandmothers.
We’ll meet an elderly ex-member of parliament, who recalls her youthful romance with an orang bunian. This was forbidden. Not because her lover was an invisible jungle spirit, but because she was Muslim and he was not. Then a teenage vampire struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love . . . and eating people. A mischievous matriarch returns from the dead to disrupt her own funeral rites, pitting granddaughter against granddaughter. An earth spirit becomes entangled in protracted negotiations with an annoying landlord. And Chang E, the Chinese moon goddess, spins off into outer space – the ultimate metaphor for diaspora.
Across nineteen sparkling stories, this is a journey into magical new worlds of the imagination.
Author: Zen Cho
Paperback Published 29 October 2024 288 pages
Originally published in trade paperback 30 January 2024
'An enchanting cross between Georgette Heyer and Susannah Clarke, full of delights and surprises' -Naomi Novik, author of Uprooted, on Sorcerer to the Crown
'Phenomenal. This is what it is to be queer and Asian . . . Magical and mundane, fierce and hopeful, Malaysian to the bone – this book is uncompromisingly itself' - Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun on Black Water Sister