238 pages hardcover
Finished books available
US: Other Press, Feb 2007
Canada: Douglas & MacIntyre
Australia & New Zealand: Penguin
Germany: Ullstein
France: Editions XYZ
Holland: De Vliegende Hollander
Mainland Chinese: Nankai University Press of Tianjin
(Photo: Robert Mills)
Wayson Choy’s first novel, The Jade Peony, spent 26 weeks on The Globe and Mail’s bestseller list and placed number six on its 1996 Year-End National Bestseller List for fiction. He shared the Trillium Award that year with Margaret Atwood and won the Vancouver Book Award. His bestselling memoir, Paper Shadows, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and won the Edna Stabler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. He was also recently appointed to the Order of Canada by former Governal General, Adrienne Clarkson. Wayson Choy lives in Toronto.
a novel by Wayson Choy
CHINATOWN, VANCOUVER, OF THE EARLY 1940s PROVIDES THE BACKDROP FOR THIS FRESH, UPLIFTING NOVEL, TOLD THROUGH THE REMINISCENCES OF THE THREE YOUNG CHILDREN OF AN IMMIGRANT CHINESE FAMILY
- Has The Jade Peony been plagiarized?
- Selected for CBC's "Canada Reads" 2010 - and read novelist Jen Sookfong Lee's essay on The Jade Peony
- Winner of the 1995 Trillium Prize
- Winner of the 1995 City of Vancouver Book Award
- Named as one of the 100 Most Important Books in Canadian History
- An American Library Association Notable Book of the Year
Chinatown, Vancouver, in the late 1930s and '40s is the setting for this poignant novel told through the vivid, intense reminiscences of three children of an immigrant family. They each experience a very different childhood as they encounter the complexities of birth and death, love and hate, kinship and otherness. Mingling with the realities of Canada and the horror of war are the magic, ghost, paper uncles and family secrets of Poh-Poh, or Grandmother, the heart and pillar of the family.
Wayson Choy's Chinatown is a community of unforgettable individuals who are "neither this not that," neither entirely Canadian nor entirely Chinese. But with each other's help, they survive hardship and heartbreak with grit and humour.
PRAISE FOR THE JADE PEONY
“An exquisite novel … the craftsmanship is glorious.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“One of the finest works of fiction yet to break the silence that surrounds so many…immigrant communities.” — MACLEANS MAGAZINE
“In China, [Choy] tells us, a figure called the 'dark storyteller' reveals 'hidden things not seen in the glare of daylight.' Working in a new country and a new context, Wayson Choy has deftly continued that tradition…a fine debut novel.” — THE NEW YORK TIMES
“A true and touching insight into a largely unrecorded wartime world. It's human and moving without being sentimental…. A genuine contribution to history as well as to fiction.” — MARGARET DRABBLE
“A book that is richly peopled with eccentric and complex characters … calls to mind David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, with the conflicts of loyalty and love and the poisoned ethnic hatred.” — ST. LOUIS POST DISPATCH
“Lyrical and moving.” — BOOKS IN CANADA
“The Jade Peony is a sweet and funny novel and accomplishes so much of what we expect in good fiction. Certainly, the novel delights us with beautifully written prose, but it does more than that, too. It renders a complex and complete human world, which, by the end of 200-odd pages, we have learned to love.” — BOSTON BOOK REVIEW
“Insightful, wise and touching.” — CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR