R. F. Kuang, 26, is hardly a debut author. She has already published four fantasy novels infused with Chinese history and profound questions about colonial legacies, including the "Poppy War" trilogy and last year's bestseller, "Babel, or the Necessity of Violence."
But Kuang's new novel, "Yellowface," is both a departure and a quantum leap straight into the zeitgeist. A dark satire on the publishing industry and the many-layered ironies of public discourse around Asian American representation, it starts with a first-chapter twist.
When rising-star novelist Athena Liu dies suddenly, her fellow writer and frenemy June Hayward is right there to pick up the pieces — or rather, to steal Athena's manuscript, a saga involving Chinese laborers during World War I. June, who is white, publishes it as her own, but under a new, racially ambiguous name — Juniper Song. She scores a big book deal and rides a wave of "own voices" storytelling in ways that make you question everything.
