Sour Heart

Review

Relegate anything else you're reading - there is no other book to be seen with now (The Times)

Deliciously subverts conventions of "immigrant literature" (Pankaj Mishra, Guardian Books of the Year)

Obscene, beautiful, moving . Jenny Zhang's astounding short story collection, Sour Heart, combines ingenious and tightly controlled technical artistry with an unfettered emotional directness that frequently moves, within single sentences, from overwhelming beauty to abject pain (New Yorker)

The writing is vibrant, the smells of the city vivid. Zhang's is an exciting voice and a welcome one (Observer)

Zhang gives life to a chorus of voices rich with reinvention, a narrative genealogy of what it is to be, to speak and to write across many forms of expression at once (Guardian)

Swerves from off-kilter humour to quiet devastation (Sunday Telegraph)

A hilarious and highly original debut collection . With a voice that is relatable yet wonderfully original, Zhang explores themes of sexual awakening, identity, poverty and integrating as an immigrant in the western world . A collection where it is difficult to pick a stand-out story because each leaves such a mark (Irish Times)

A refreshingly honest portrayal of some of the more universal realities of girlhood . That's what makes Zhang's work so remarkable: her unique ability to tell universal truths about what it means to belong, while illuminating realities we simply do not hear often enough about (Independent)

A new voice for a generation - a hugely original debut short story collection . Zhang's writing is gritty, confronting and continually surprising - the bleakest moments are shot through with love and humour . the raw edge of Zhang's very necessary new voice had me gripped (Stylist)

Raw, and often darkly comic . the tales revel in the intimate details of domesticity, resonant of A M Homes or Helen Ellis (Red)

About the Author

Jenny Zhang was born in Shanghai and raised in New York. She is the author of a poetry collection, Dear Jenny, We Are All Find, and a collection of poems and essays, The Selected Jenny Zhang. She was nominated for a National Magazine Award for her essay in Poetry magazine, and her writing has also appeared in the New York Times magazine, New York magazine, Rookie, Lenny and BuzzFeed. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Jennybagel.com / @Jennybagel