And The Ancestors Sing is a sweeping, multigenerational novel of sacrifice, survival, and the unbreakable pull of home, set against the rapidly changing backdrop of post-Cultural Revolution China.
In 1978, as the Cultural Revolution fades into history, Lei is bartered away into marriage for two cartons of cigarettes and a handful of eggs. She finds herself in the unfamiliar village of her new husband, where she is met with indifference. When a disaster upends their world, she and her husband are forced to join China’s vast wave of city-bound, rural migrants, leaving behind children whom they may never see again.
Sixteen-year-old LuLu arrives in Shanghai with nothing but ambition. Denied a factory job and determined to keep her family from starving, she turns to sex work—navigating the dangers of the city’s underbelly with sharp wit and a fierce will to survive. When the powerful and ruthless Farmer Master Wang offers her a chance at security, LuLu faces an impossible choice: seize a future that could lift her family from poverty, or risk everything for a life on her own terms.
Spanning decades of seismic social and economic change, And The Ancestors Sing is a deeply moving exploration of resilience, family, and the ties that bind us, perfect for fans of Pachinko and The Island of Sea Women.
