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Real Americans: A novel
Current price:
$29.00
Publication Date: April 30th, 2024
Publisher:
Knopf
ISBN:
9780593537251
Pages:
416
Available for Preorder
Description
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?
"Mesmerizing"—Brit Bennett • "A page turner.”—Ha Jin • “Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft"—Andrew Sean Greer • "Traverses time with verve and feeling."—Raven Leilani
Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.
In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.
In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.
Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?
Praise for Real Americans: A novel
*A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024, at publications including: The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Today, TIME, Kirkus, Goodreads, Vogue, LitHub, New York Magazine, Amazon, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour, Real Simple, Vanity Fair, Vulture, BookPage, San Francisco Chronicle, The Story Exchange, Bustle, Town & Country, Alta, Our Culture, theSkimm, The Millions, The Rumpus... and more!*
"A disorienting, masterful, shape-shifting novel about multiracial identity.... What makes Americans 'real'? Is it our competitive drive? Our craving for wealth and status? Our insatiable quest for scientific advancement? Or is it—inevitably—the color of our skin and eyes? This concern spirals quietly, like a double helix, through Rachel Khong’s enigmatic second novel, Real Americans.... [Rachel] Khong manages these twisting threads with masterful deftness.... [An] irresistible puzzle of a novel."—Aimee Liu, Los Angeles Times
"If you liked Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, read Real Americans by Rachel Khong...[Rachel Khong] returns, painting on a larger canvas, in this story about three generations of a Chinese American family...Different voices follow, in a multilayered look at family and identity." —The Washington Post
"[Real Americans is a] plot-rich, spiraling, multigenerational epic [that] possesses the same heartrending humanity and deceptively subtle portrayal of characters' unseen depths [as Rachel Khong's debut]—so impossible to relate, so essential to everything. As in life, the love is in the details." —Annie Bostrom, Booklist
"An absolute page turner, this multi-generation family saga is quietly suspenseful. The dynamics between lovers, parents, and children is simultaneously simply and elegantly written. Spanning between the 1960s to present day, Khong weaves a gripping tale you are, for sure, not going to want to miss."—"Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2024," Kami Tei, Amazon Editor
"Unforgettable...Vibrant, tender and one to pass onto a friend."—"Best New Books of Spring," Oprah Daily
"This multigenerational stunner asks a thought-provoking question: Do we have any control over our destiny, or do some people just get lucky?"—Real Simple
"[A]n ambitious, spacious book...I was entirely entranced...from the start, and I talked about it endlessly to anyone who would listen when I finished. I’d like to announce that this will be the buzzy book of the season (it should be, anyway!), and you don’t want to miss out.” —Jana Pollack, Skimm Reads editor
"It's a tale as old as time: Poor girl meets rich boy, they fall in love, and they live happily ever after. Well, not quite... A profound read."—People
"Imaginative...expansive...intimate... Real Americans is a profound, riveting, and loving journey of betrayal and forgiveness, of words left unsaid, that will provide rich food for thought for book clubs and independent readers alike." —Jaclyn Fulwood, Shelf Awareness
"[A] sweeping, smart, and totally engrossing story about destiny, determination, and what truly makes us who we are [that] explores [these themes] with style and smarts." —"Must Read Books of 2024," Town & Country
"With shades of magical realism, [Real Americans] considers destiny, race, and privilege as its three main characters confront how their lives have been shaped by a confluence of biology, world events, their parents’ choices, and pure luck. Ultimately the novel excavates the tricky endeavor of breaking free from preordained destiny." —"The Best Books of 2024 So Far," Vogue
"By encompassing a family as a whole, [Real Americans] asks big questions about our lineage and futures, how much is really up to us, whether the fact of our pasts guarantee our fate, or whether we have agency over the lives we live."—"Most Anticipated Books of 2024," Literary Hub
“Khong masterfully explores a family splintered by science, struggling to redefine their own lives after uncovering harrowing secrets. Real Americans is a mesmerizing multigenerational novel about privilege, identity and the illusions of the American dream.”—Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half
“Real Americans is a grand novel that explores the American psyche, dramatizing the fundamental American belief in the ability to change the world and improve humanity. Rachel Khong shows infinite and colorful perceptions of the world, which are often leavened with wisdom. Besides being a page turner, this book is also an eye-opener, imaginative and exhilarating.”—Ha Jin, author of Waiting
“Real Americans traverses time with verve and feeling. Khong captures how people can be strange to themselves, how bewilderment can be a site of creation (or change, or becoming).”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster
“Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans flips the multigenerational novel inside out. Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your mind.”—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Is Lost
“Aglow with love in its many forms, suffused with questions of where—and to whom—we belong, Real Americans is a book of rare charm. Khong untangles the roots of family with a wry, tender attention that will leave readers as comforted as they are challenged.”—C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold and Land of Milk and Honey
“Rachel Khong’s gripping second novel explores how biology, our parents’ abstract hopes for us, sheer luck, and the forces of history itself make us who we are. Real Americans is both a tender story of the intimate relationships between people and a sharp examination of very big questions of ethics, politics, and fate.”—Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
"A sweeping exploration of choice, chance, class, race, and genetic engineering in three generations of a Chinese American family. Khong’s follow-up to her sweet, slim debut... [is] on a more ambitious scale, portraying three generations in what feel like three linked novellas, or somehow also like three connected gardens...[Concern] for how and why we turn out the way we do animates the book on every level...Every character is dear, and every one of them makes big mistakes, causing a ripple effect of anger and estrangement that we watch with dismay, and hope. Bold, thoughtful, and delicate at once, addressing life’s biggest questions through artfully crafted scenes and characters." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review*
