A gorgeous Beijing-set novel of music, secrets and self-discovery

For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. With her marriage, she gave up on her own career as a concert pianist, but her husband Bowen has long rebuffed her desire to have a child.

Instead, she must accommodate her mother-in-law, newly arrived from the province of Yunnan and bringing with her long-buried family secrets. Soon strange parcels start to show up on the doorstep and Song Yan's dreams become troubling and claustrophobic. Striking out alone through the winter city, she finds herself pulled into the ancient hutongs to confront the source of her unease.

In a silent room within a timeless house, can she find the notes she needs to make sense of all the pain and beauty in her life?


Praise for Braised Pork:

'Startlingly original' Guardian
'Intensely atmospheric' LA Review of Books
'Otherworldly and deeply moving' BuzzFeed
'Real magic' LitHub
'Shimmering' Wall Street Journal
'Rich and wild' Observer
'Enchanting' Shelf Awareness
'Electric' TIME

An intriguing book that knits together music and life to touch on something profound * Guardian *
Vivid descriptions of contemporary Beijing ... Yu writes in clear, unadorned prose and deftly threads the magic-realist elements through the main narrative * Financial Times *
Transporting, searching and poetic * List *
This playful, often surreal novel packs in plenty ... an elusive tale, steeped in atmosphere * Mail on Sunday *
Ghost Music has beautiful prose and claustrophobic imagery that intensely evokes its protagonist's alienation * New Statesman *
Spellbinding and atmospheric . . . With its quiet, dreamy bending of reality and its precise depiction of many different strains of alienation, Ghost Music is an evocative exploration of what it means to live fully-and the potential consequences of failing to do so. Yu braids the mundane and the magical together with a gentle hand . . . There's something here of early Murakami's graceful, open-ended approach to the uncanny, as well as the vivid yet muted emotionality of Patrick Modiano or Katie Kitamura. Like these skillful portraitists of alienation, Yu conjures a visceral inbetweenness where the worlds of matter and spirit meet in a shared, suspended space -- Alexandra Kleeman * New York Times Book Review *
Startlingly original * Guardian on BRAISED PORK *
Intensely atmospheric * LA Review of Books on BRAISED PORK *
Otherwordly and deeply moving * BuzzFeed on BRAISED PORK *
Real magic * LitHub on BRAISED PORK *
Shimmering * Wall Street Journal on BRAISED PORK *
Rich and wild * Observer on BRAISED PORK *
Enchanting * Shelf Awareness on BRAISED PORK *
Electric * TIME on BRAISED PORK *

An Yu was born and raised in Beijing, and left at the age of eighteen to study in New York at NYU. A graduate of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, she writes her fiction in English. She is twenty-six years old and lives between Paris and Hong Kong. Her debut novel, Braised Pork, was published by Harvill Secker in 2020.