Illuminating “Sunbirth”

Join us at 12:30 p.m. today for a live conversation with author An Yu.

Join us today, Wednesday, August 27, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern when we’ll be talking about Sunbirth, by An Yu, live with the author. Tune in from your desktop at The Ink or from a phone or tablet with the Substack app. The Book Club is open to all supporting subscribers of The Ink.

This afternoon, we will have our chance to talk about the many mysteries of our August Book Club selection, Sunbirth, with its author, An Yu. She’ll be joining us from Hong Kong, and we’re grateful to her for agreeing to stay up late — our midday will be her midnight, which fits the text, we think.

Something we’ve been thinking about that hasn’t come up previously: An Yu has lived in various places around the world—Beijing, New York, Paris, Hong Kong. She writes fiction in English, an adopted language. How does being so well-traveled influence her fiction? If she’d never left Beijing, how different a writer would she be? Does her familiarity with many parts of the world make her feel at home wherever she goes, or does being an expat mean that she never feels quite settled? At The Ink we have often talked about an insider-outsider perspective and what it brings to politics, or to journalism. What does it mean for a novelist? And for a novel that describes such a limited world?

We’ve talked about so many of your great insights into the novel this month, but before our discussion we’d love to hear from you about what most intrigued you about Sunbirth, what still puzzles you about the novel, and what you most want to ask An Yu. Book Club members, let us know in the comments below, and we will try to get to as many of your questions as we can during our conversation today.

Thanks, and see you a little later today for the discussion!

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