And The Ancestors Sing

Spanning decades of seismic social and economic change in post-Cultural Revolution China, And The Ancestors Sing is a deeply moving exploration of family, resilience, and the ties that bind us, perfect for fans of Pachinko and The Island of Sea Women. In 1978, as the Cultural Revolution fades into history, Lei is bartered away into marriage for two cartons of cigarettes and a handful of eggs. She finds herself in the unfamiliar village of her new husband where she is met with indifference. When a disaster upends their world, Lei and her husband are forced to join China’s vast wave of city-bound, rural migrants, leaving behind children whom they may never see again. Sixteen-year-old LuLu arrives in Shanghai with nothing but ambition. Denied a factory job and determined to keep her family from starving, she turns to sex work, navigating the dangers of the city’s underbelly with sharp wit and a fierce will to survive. When the powerful and ruthless Farmer Master Wang offers her a chance at security, LuLu faces an impossible choice: seize a future that could lift her family from poverty, or risk everything for a life on her own terms. Immersive, evocative, and impeccably detailed, And The Ancestors Sing is a sweeping, multigenerational story of sacrifice, survival, and the unbreakable pull of home.