Publishers Weekly
★ 02/01/2021
Yu’s outstanding debut opens with an enticing work of visual poetry that sets the stage for a story built of stories about the hopes of a family searching for a place where they can feel safe. Firuzeh and her family flee Afghanistan in the middle of the night, trusting hearsay that the people smugglers escorting them are honest. As they travel by land, air, and boat, the family endures cramped quarters, a waning food and water supply, and a storm that takes refugees’ lives, but Firuzeh fills even the tensest moments of their journey with fantastical stories of what their lives will be once they’ve reached Australia. Unfortunately, once they do reach their destination, the dream of freedom, safety, and comfort remains elusive in the face of poor living conditions and xenophobia. In flowing, lyrical prose, Yu showcases the power of folklore and the pain of displacement. This is a knockout. Agent: Markus Hoffman, Regal Hoffman & Assoc. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
★ “In flowing, lyrical prose, Yu showcases the power of folklore and the pain of displacement. This is a knockout.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
★ “On Fragile Waves is a lyrical fabulist novel that will enchant readers of both literary fiction and fantasy.” —Booklist, starred review
★ “An evocative and heart-lacerating debut novel. . . . Essential fiction to understand our world.” —Library Journal, starred review
★ “On Fragile Waves is a masterful and poetic novel about finding hope and joy in the most dire circumstances.” —Foreword Reviews, starred review
“This is Yu’s first novel, but you’d never know it from the surety of her approach, the immensity of what she achieves. On Fragile Waves is a tremendous and almost unbearable work of witness. It is devastating and perfect.” —Amal El-Mohtar in the New York Times Book Review
“One of the most devastatingly beautiful books I read all year.”—NPR, “Best Books of 2021”
“Beautifully written, absorbing, powerful. . . . This should win awards when it comes out next year. I think Yu is doing some of the most exciting things in genre.” —Tor.com
“Powerfully affecting.” —Ted Chiang, author of Exhalation
“An extraordinary achievement—original in voice, powerful in material, a book of brutal beauty and unflinching compassion. May it be noticed and read and praised and believed.” —Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
“A heartbreaking celebration of the necessity of joy. A soul-searing tale of homecoming, home-becoming, home-conjuring. By holding up the jagged beauty of faith against despair, E. Lily Yu is the brilliant voice of conscience our age needs.” —Ken Liu, author of The Paper Menagerie
“An incredibly accomplished debut novel, a necessary and important tale of empathy and imagination and hope.” —Matt Bell, author of Appleseed
“E. Lily Yu's finely honed prose and her child narrator allow for flashes of warmth and beauty between the shocks and sorrows, the terrors and humiliations.” —Margo Lanagan, author of Tender Morsels
“Vivid, intense and heart-wrenching. On Fragile Waves is both a coming-of-age tale and an unflinching meditation on exile, belonging, fragility and hope.” —Victoria Law, co-author of Prison By Any Other Name
“On Fragile Waves confirms that E. Lily Yu is a prodigy. Every line a gemstone, every page a calligram.” — Usman T. Malik, author of Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan
“A stunning heartbreaker. The prose is as sharp and beautiful as the story it tells . . . bringing into painful beautiful focus all the ways the world is horrible, and all the ways the world is magic.” —Sam J. Miller, author of Blackfish City
Library Journal
★ 12/01/2020
DEBUT Yu follows up her sf and fantasy short fiction, including the Hugo-, Locus-, and Nebula-nominated and Astounding Award-winning "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees," with an evocative and heart-lacerating debut novel. Firuzeh and her brother Nour flee war-torn Kabul with their parents, who tell them fairy tales to ease the journey through Pakistan and Indonesia to Nauru Island, their gateway to Australia. The journey is hard, their stay in Nauru's immigration detention camp harder, and even as the family makes it to Australia, they are not sure whether they will be allowed to stay. As she and Nour adjust to a life that may never be theirs, Firuzeh is helped along by some hardheaded advice from a drowned girl named Nasima, a magic realist touch that (with the interwoven fairy tales) serves to amplify a situation both harsh and unimaginable—can people really be made to suffer this way and for naught? While Yu's exactingly detailed story is told in the third person, the voices of the children predominate, which makes this wrenching portrait of the immigrant experience especially affecting. VERDICT Essential fiction to understand our world; Yu will draw in new fans while continuing to intrigue those who have read her for years.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
