Number One Chinese Restaurant

Author: Lillian Li

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $32.99 NZD
  • : 9781911590163
  • : Pushkin Press, Limited
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  • : January 2019
  • : ---length:- '23.4'width:- '15.3'units:- Centimeters
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  • : 33.0
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Lillian Li
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  • : Paperback
  • : 1904
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  • : en
  • : 813.6
  • : 1 Fiction
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  • : 336
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Barcode 9781911590163
9781911590163

Description

The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, is not only a beloved go-to setting for hunger pangs and celebrations; it is its own world, inhabited by waiters and kitchen staff who have been fighting, loving, and aging within its walls for decades.


When disaster strikes, this working family's controlled chaos is set loose, forcing each character to confront the conflicts that fast-paced restaurant life has kept at bay.


Owner Jimmy Han hopes to leave his late father's homespun establishment for a fancier one. Jimmy's older brother, Johnny, and Johnny's daughter, Annie, ache to return to a time before a father's absence and a teenager's silence pushed them apart. Nan and Ah-Jack, longtime Duck House employees, are tempted to turn their thirty-year friendship into something else, even as Nan's son, Pat, struggles to stay out of trouble. And when Pat and Annie, caught in a mix of youthful lust and boredom, find themselves in a dangerous game that implicates them in the Duck House tragedy, their families must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to help their children.


Generous in spirit, unaffected in its intelligence, multi-voiced, poignant, and darkly funny, Number One Chinese Restaurant looks beyond red tablecloths and silkscreen murals to share an unforgettable story about youth and aging, parents and children, and all the ways that our families destroy us while also keeping us grounded and alive. 

Awards

Longlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction

Reviews

'The sharply comic debut about the tangled lives of people working, fighting and falling in love in a neighbourhood Chinese restaurant. 'An enthralling plot line reminiscent of a prime time drama that you can't stop watching... we couldn't put it down' --Bon Appétit


'Li's talent for human tragicomedy grows more evident by the page... Li generously realizes the dreams, the regrets, and the resilience of a family holding on to its American dream, hoping it doesn't slip away' - Entertainment Weekly