One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her.
With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an “all-American boy.” But far away from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his new life with his mother’s disappearance and the memories of the family and community he left behind.
Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid and moving examination of borders and belonging. It’s the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he’s loved has been taken away--and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.
This powerful debut is the winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses issues of social justice.
丽莎·康(Lisa Ko)，出生在纽约皇后区，在新泽西长大，现居布鲁克林，凭其首部小说《离岸人》获得了2016年的美国社会领头羊小说奖(PEN /Bellwether Prize)。她的作品出现在《2016年美国短篇小说》《纽约时报》《使徒日记》《叙事》《纽约时报》《铜镍》《故事和弦》《一个少年故事》《布鲁克林评论》等。
译者简介：
梁欣琢，南京大学英美文学硕士，英语译者，译有《非暴力沟通（实践篇）》《人间谬误》《苹果树》等书。