A Feather on the Breath of God

From Sigrid Nunez, the National Book Award-winning and bestselling author of The Friend, comes this mesmerising story about the tangled nature of relationships between parents and children, between language and love.

'A pleasure from the first page to the last' JONATHAN FRANZEN

A young woman looks back to the world of her immigrant parents: a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother, who meet in postwar Germany and settle in New York City. Growing up in a housing project in the 1950s and 1960s, the narrator escapes into dreams inspired both by her parents' stories and by her own reading and, for a time, into the otherworldly life of ballet. A yearning homesick mother, a silent and withdrawn father, the ballet-these are the elements that shape the young woman's imagination and her sexuality.

'A forceful novel by a writer of uncommon talent' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“A forceful novel by a writer of uncommon talent - New York Times Book ReviewA pleasure from the first page to the last - Jonathan FranzenRemarkable - Los Angeles Times Book ReviewAn intelligent and poignant examination of social and erotic displacement, and written with such extraordinary and seemingly unstudied conviction that one accepts every word of it as truth - Atlantic Monthly A Feather on the Breath of God brilliantly succeeds in describing a life on the fringe, outside the conventional categories of cultural and personal identity. . . . A remarkable book, full of strange brilliance, trembling with fury and tenderness - Philadelphia Enquirer”

A forceful novel by a writer of uncommon talent - New York Times Book Review

A pleasure from the first page to the last - Jonathan Franzen

Remarkable - Los Angeles Times Book Review

An intelligent and poignant examination of social and erotic displacement, and written with such extraordinary and seemingly unstudied conviction that one accepts every word of it as truth - Atlantic Monthly

A Feather on the Breath of God brilliantly succeeds in describing a life on the fringe, outside the conventional categories of cultural and personal identity. . . . A remarkable book, full of strange brilliance, trembling with fury and tenderness - Philadelphia Enquirer

Sigrid Nunez is the New York Times bestselling author of The Friend, winner of the 2018 National Book Award, and of seven other novels, including Salvation City, The Last of Her Kind, and What Are You Going Through. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Her books have been translated into over thirty languages.

From Sigrid Nunez, the National Book Award-winning and bestselling author of The Friend, comes this mesmerising story about the tangled nature of relationships between parents and children, between language and love. 'A pleasure from the first page to the last' JONATHAN FRANZENA young woman looks back to the world of her immigrant parents: a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother, who meet in postwar Germany and settle in New York City. Growing up in a housing project in the 1950s and 1960s, the narrator escapes into dreams inspired both by her parents' stories and by her own reading and, for a time, into the otherworldly life of ballet. A yearning homesick mother, a silent and withdrawn father, the ballet-these are the elements that shape the young woman's imagination and her sexuality. 'A forceful novel by a writer of uncommon talent' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

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