Sunbirth

An Yu

$45

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Harvill Secker
10 July 2025

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Fiction: special features; Global warming

A dazzlingly eerie and bewitching novel. As the sun starts slowly disappearing, the residents of a remote town in the desert find themselves undergoing shocking transformations.

In Five Poems Lake, a small village surrounded by impenetrable deserts, the sun is slowly disappearing overhead. A young woman keeps an apprehensive eye on the sky above as she tends her family's pharmacy of traditional medicine. She has few customers, and even fewer visitors. Her father was found dead by the lake twelve years ago, in unexplained circumstances. Her elder sister, Dong Ji, works at a wellness parlour across town for those who can afford it - which, during these strange and difficult days, is not many.

The town fell on hard times long before the sun began to shrink, but now, every few days, a new sliver disappears. As the temperature drops and the lake freezes over, the inhabitants of the town realise that there is no way they can survive. But when the Beacons appear - ordinary people with heads replaced by searing, blinding light, like miniature suns - the residents wonder if they may hold the answer to their salvation, or if they are just another sign of impending ruin. Soon, Dong Ji and her sister will uncover a photograph which may offer a clue in the mystery of the Beacons, and finally help them learn what happened to their father.

Sunbirth honours the unique relationship between sisters, their love for each other and their desire to be free. Richly surreal and anchored by searching curiosity and wisdom, it asks how much we can ever know about the deepest mysteries of the world.

By: An Yu
Imprint: Harvill Secker
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 222mm, Width: 138mm, Spine: 40mm
Weight: 500g
ISBN: 9781787304970
ISBN 10: 1787304973
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 10 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

An Yu was born and raised in Beijing. She left at the age of eighteen to study in New York City. A graduate of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, she writes her fiction in English and lives in Hong Kong. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Braised Pork and Ghost Music.

Reviews for Sunbirth

There's something here of early Murakami's graceful, open-ended approach to the uncanny... an evocative exploration of what it means to live fully * New York Times Book Review on GHOST MUSIC *