Showing posts with label Beijing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beijing. Show all posts

Friday 17 November 2023

Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

 Devika Misra reports.



Singaporean-born, Paris-based Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a poet, translator, musician, and now novelist. Her debut work of fiction Dear Chrysanthemums can be read as a novel or as separate interconnected short stories. Set in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Paris, and New York, the protagonists are all victims of difficult circumstances; young Asian women, alone, vulnerable and struggling to survive displacement and sometimes violence and assault. Despite suffering lifelong mental anguish, they prove emotionally resilient and are keen to connect with the wider world as they construct different personas in challenging and ever-changing landscapes.