August 2024: Aube Rey Lescure

Aube Rey Lescure is a French-Chinese writer who grew up between Provence, northern China and Shanghai. She worked in foreign policy before turning to writing fulltime. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, Best American Essays, Litro and elsewhere. River East, River West is her debut novel. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, 2024.

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This August we're delighted to feature the opening chapter of Aube Rey Lescure's novel River East, River West, published in the UK by Duckworth Books, and recently shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. In this first chapter we meet 14-year-old Alva, at her mother's wedding, and begin to see her observations on the adult world around her.

Shanghai, 2007: feeling betrayed by her American mother’s engagement to their rich landlord Lu Fang, fourteen-year-old Alva begins plotting her escape. But the exclusive American School – a potential ticket out – is not what she imagined.

Qingdao, 1985: newlywed Lu Fang works as a lowly shipping clerk. Though he aspires to a bright future, he is one of many casualties of harsh political reforms. Then China opens up to foreigners and capital, and Lu Fang meets a woman who makes him question what he should settle for…

A mesmerising reversal of the east–west immigrant narrative set against China’s economic boom, River East, River West is a deeply moving exploration of race, identity and family, of capitalism’s false promise and private dreams. 

The novel was included in Oprah's best novels for January 2024, and was reviewed in the Guardian by Sana Goyal:

Rey Lescure takes both real and constructed binaries – city life/country life, poverty/wealth, America/China, insider/outsider, rise/fall, glitter/grit – and cleverly closes the gap between them, showing how belonging – within a family, country, history – can be messier and knottier. She writes about migration and expatriation, alienation and ambition, family and multiracial identity, h/History and destiny with attentiveness and assertiveness. River East, River West is at once autobiographical fiction and historical fiction, a Shanghai novel and a novel of the American dream, and a story in which families and countries fall apart, but also have a chance at fresh starts.

And you can read some interesting interviews with the author, including this one, from the Women's Prize, and this one from the Columbia Journal:

In this sense my book is actually well in that tradition of social novels about Chinese society—from Lu Xun to Qian Zhongshu, from Mo Yan to Xu Zechen. Every scene is about characters of different social statuses exploiting each other or not exploiting each other. The question often is: Are you getting hustled? Is the relationship exploitative? Or can we find sincerity, authenticity, and humanity underneath it all?

We're also going to be featuring the novel in our Book Review Network, so watch this space to find out more about our reviewers' thoughts!