How Much of These Hills Is Gold

Honoree, 5 Under 35 2020

ISBN 9780525537205
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House
C Pam Zhang

C Pam Zhang is the author of Land of Milk and Honey and How Much of These Hills Is Gold, winner of the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, longlisted for the Booker Prize, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. More about this author >

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From the publisher:

Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.

Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and reimagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it’s about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.

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