Our Fleeting Splendor on Earth Author: [US] Wang Ouxing Publisher: Beijing United Publishing Company

Introduction · · · · · ·
"I've always told myself that we are all products of war - but I'm wrong. We are all products of beauty."

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◆An epistolary novel based on the personal experience of Wang Ouxing, winner of the Eliot Prize, the Whiting Prize, and the MacArthur Genius Award.

◆It shocked the literary world as soon as it was published and was listed on the New York Times bestseller list.

◆It is one of the novels with the most entries on the authoritative media’s annual book selection list in 2019.

2020 National Book Awards

2020 Mark Twain American Voice Literary Award

2019 MacArthur Genius Grant

2019 New England Booksellers Association Awards

Shortlisted for the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2019 National Book Award

Shortlisted for the 2019 Carnegie Medal for Literature

Shortlisted for the 2019 ASPEN WORDS Literary Award

The New Yorker's Book of the Year

Time Magazine's Book of the Year

The Washington Post's Book of the Year

Los Angeles Times Book of the Year

The Guardian's annual book selection

The Times Book of the Year

The Observer's Book of the Year

Publishers Weekly Book of the Year

Kirkus Reviews Book of the Year

The Irish Independent's Book of the Year

Toronto Star Book of the Year

…

◆A Saigon teenager's growth memoirs and family's sad history

◆A brutally frank exploration of family, race, class, gender, and self-identity

◆Introduction◆

I am a puppy.

My grandmother, Lan, gave me the name. In the village where Lan grew up, people would give children like me who were too thin a mean name to protect them. A name is as thin as air, but it can also be used as a shield. A puppy shield.

My mother, grandmother, and I fled the war to America. I took off our native language and put on my English like a mask so that others could see my face and, in turn, theirs.

I am writing to my mother as the Son of Man. I have so much to tell her. Memories of the past, and the secret I have yet to tell her. Because I don't want to be erased before I have even said who I am.

◆Recommended by celebrities and media◆

It is appropriate to describe this book as "inspiring, shocking, urgent, and necessary", but what lingers in my mind is "naked": the emotions in it are so powerful that you will feel it scraping your bones after reading it. Wang Ouxing uses the precision of a poet to examine whether the experience expressed in words can become a bridge that connects the wounds of generations, and whether it can be heard and seen by our true loved ones. -- Celeste Ng, author of "Silent Confessions"

This book is not "briefly brilliant" but "eternally stunning." - The Washington Post

The heartfelt and heartfelt confession that makes people take off their disguises is exquisite in words and style. ——"Pages"