A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of celebrated author Lan Samantha Chang’s searing debut, “a work of gorgeous, enduring prose” (Helen C. Wan, Washington Post).
A powerful exploration of the Asian American experience, Hunger weaves the forces of war and magic, food and desire, ghosts and family into haunting tales of love and loss. The characters who inhabit this extraordinary collection are caught between the burden of their past and the fragility of their unchartered future. Hunger illuminates the experiences of first-generation immigrants from China, culturally and emotionally uprooted from their homeland, who mistrust connection even as they hunger for attachment—and how their choices shape their children.
“[Lan Samantha Chang’s] stories constitute a delicately calculated balance sheet of the losses and gains of immigrants whose lives are stretched between two radically different cultures. . . . Complex and rueful, her fiction gives voice to internal struggles, withheld catalogues of loss.” —Claire Messud, New York Times
“Moving and thought-provoking. . . . Chang's stories open up to readers a world of sadness and regret.” —Chicago Tribune