{"product_id":"daydreamers-alvin-lu-9781573662123","title":"Daydreamers","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA fragmented manuscript left unfinished, a voice inherited by time, a ghost lingering in the margins--\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eDaydreamers\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e is what remains when fiction forgets its fiction and when the story you're translating becomes your own.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUpon the discovery of an unfinished manuscript left behind by his late father, a son's act of literary translation quickly descends into a ghost story of family rumors, art, and the history we inherit, whether we want them or not. As the son translates the mysterious text, what emerges is a narrative haunted by betrayal, artistic rivalry, and a murder in California's Chinese literary underground--one that was never solved but perhaps was fictionalized.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCycling between San Francisco, Los Angeles, China, and Taiwan, the novel unfolds across generations of Chinese immigrants and diaspora artists, linked by tenuous friendships, publishing feuds, and the obscure threads of an act of violence. At the center: a spectral woman named Lena Wu, the object of literary fixation, political allegory, and real-life scandal.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWas the manuscript meant as a novel or a confession? Was the story's central figure--Lena Wu--a real person or an idea and persona passed between generations of writers, each shaping her into their own myth? And what is the narrator's responsibility when his father's version of events begins to implicate those still living? \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTold through letters, interviews, travelogues, and unclaimed fragments, Daydreamers moves through foggy cities, cluttered studios, desert highways, and vanished publishing circles--where stories are currency and silence is survival. Lu constructs a novel that is both noir and anti-noir, both memoir and anti-memoir--a mystery that resists solving, and a translation that becomes its own original work.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Alvin Lu\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1573662127\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781573662123\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e F2c\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/15\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 202\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.00lbs","brand":"Alvin Lu","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46962645893375,"sku":"9781573662123","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_03806102-e94c-49a9-9fbd-121482490091.jpg?v=1750652093","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/daydreamers-alvin-lu-9781573662123","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}