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A Map for the Missing
A Literary Fiction Novel by Belinda Huijuan Tang
Subgenres:
- Historical Fiction,
- Family Saga
This book is for you if you're into...
- Post–Cultural Revolution China and the ripple effects on families
- Estranged sons returning home to unravel family mysteries
- Reunions with old loves shaped by history and regret
From Little Stack
Sometimes it’s not just a town you return to, but an entire culture. In this powerful novel, Yitian’s father’s disappearance in rural China leads him back home after nearly ten years working as a professor in America. China’s Cultural Revolution has made the country far different than the one he left, and Yitian struggles to adjust, let alone find his missing father. Along the way, he reunites with Hanwen, an old friend he once loved. You’ll be turning pages to see where Yitian’s search leads as he comes to terms with his changing home country.
An epic, mesmerizing debut novel set against a rapidly changing post–Cultural Revolution China, A Map for the Missing reckons with the costs of pursuing one's dreams and the lives we leave behind.
Tang Yitian has been living in America, estranged from his family, for almost a decade when he receives an urgent phone call from his mother: his father has disappeared from the family's rural village in China. When Yitian returns home and attempts to piece together what may have happened, he struggles to navigate the country's impenetrable bureaucracy as an outsider. So he seeks out a childhood friend: Tian Hanwen, who as a teenager was "sent down" from Shanghai to Yitian's village as part of China's rustication campaign. Young and in love, they dreamed of attending university together. But after a terrible tragedy, their paths diverged, and while Yitian ended up a professor in America, Hanwen was left behind.
Reuniting for the first time as adults, Yitian and Hanwen embark on a search for Yitian's father, all the while grappling with the past and what might have been. Spanning the late 1970s to 1990s and moving effortlessly between rural provinces and big cities, A Map for the Missing is a deeply felt examination of family and forgiveness, and the meaning of home.
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