Join us for Lescure's debut novel shortlisted for the 2024 Women's Literature Award. Copies of the book will be available one month in advance at the Circulation Desk.
French-Chinese-American author Aube Rey Lescure's debut novel River East, River West tells a reversal of the east-west immigrant story that is set against China's economic boom. The novel follows two characters, Alva, a teenager in China raised by her American mother in Shanghai, and LuFang, the rich landlord of Alva and her mother, as they come of age in China. The story is told in alternating time frames: the 1980s in Qingdao, the seaside town where a young newly married LuFang works in a lowly clerk position in a shipyard, and 2007 in Shanghai, where teenage Alva feels betrayed by her mother's marriage to their rich landlord LuFang and plots an escape. Lescure's novel explores race, identity, culture, and capitalism's false promise and private dreams. Limited to 15 participants.
