In a single year, my father left us twice.
With maturity and sophistication, humor and beauty, Thien has crafted a novel that is at once intimate and grandly political, rooted in the details of life inside China yet transcendent in its universality..
Her quest will unveil how Kai, her enigmatic father, a talented pianist, and Ai-Ming\'s father, the shy and brilliant composer, Sparrow, along with the violin prodigy Zhuli were forced to reimagine their artistic and private selves during China\'s political campaigns and how their fates reverberate through the years with lasting consequences.
Through their relationship Marie strives to piece together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile layers of their collective story.
At the center of this epic story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming.
Master storyteller Madeleine Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations--those who lived through Mao\'s Cultural Revolution and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square.
I was ten years old.
The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life.
In a single year, my father left us twice
