💡 Belinda Huijuan Tang’s 2022 debut novel A Map for the Missing is a slow, melancholic read that rewards patience. If you’re looking for a page-turner, this isn’t it, but if you’re looking for something that quietly burrows into your brain and stays there, read on.

Yitian is a young Chinese man living in the US, a near-miraculous leap from his rural upbringing. Now a professor of mathematics, he grew up taunted by his family for his bookishness, finding kinship only in Hanwen, a like-minded friend, before the years pulled them apart. When Yitian’s aging mother calls to tell him his estranged father has gone missing, he returns home, his only hope of finding him lying with Hanwen.

The title is apt: this is a novel about people who have lost their way in every sense — but it’s also historical fiction at its finest. Spanning the 1960s to the 90s, Tang traces a pivotal stretch of modern Chinese history: the Cultural Revolution. Through Yitian, Hanwen, and a sharp cast of secondary characters, we see what China’s upheaval meant for people across different social strata.

Though told in third person, the prose is intimate, moving through characters’ interior lives with care. In under 400 pages, Tang takes on cultural expectations, classism, corruption, and generational trauma. Chapters alternate between decades and perspectives, letting readers piece the timeline together themselves.

Tang’s sentences are unadorned, but precise, and her characters feel lived-in rather than constructed. For a debut, she writes with unusual restraint, and seasoned talent.

WHERE TO GET IT- You can find A Map for the Missing as an ebook and audiobook on Amazon. Keep an eye out on Cherry Blossom Books for a restock of the paperback edition.

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