Chiew-Siah TEI ... Little Hut of Leaping Fishes (Picador, 2008)

A SWEEPING, GRIPPING TALE of rebellion and discovery, Chiew-Siah Tei’s Little Hut of Leaping Fishes (Picador, June 2008) traces one man’s journey to seek a life of his own in the slipstream of historic change.

About Little Hut of Leaping Fishes
Mingzhi was born to be a mandarin. As the first grandson of the formidable Master Chai, his life is mapped from the moment of his birth. But times are changing in China, and as Mingzhi grows, he begins to question his privileged status and the secrets and shadows that lurk in the corners of the Chai mansion. Eager to flee from the corruption, treachery and rivalries of his family—Master Chai, who farms opium poppies and beats out orders with his dragon stick; the jealousy of his second mother and half brother; and his opium-addict father—Mingzhi soon realises his only path to freedom is through learning. But as the foreign devils begin to encroach on China, Mingzhi is torn between two cultures; he must make his choice between the past and the future.

Chiew-Siah Tei

About Chiew-Siah Tei
Chiew-Siah Tei was born and raised in Tampin, a small town in southern Malaysia. A bilingual writer, she has won a series of awards for her Chinese prose, including the Huo Zong International Chinese Fiction Award. She wrote the script for Night Swimmer, which won Best Short Film at the Vendome International Film Festival, and her play, Three Thousand Troubled Threads, was staged at the Edinburgh International Festival. She left for the U.K. to study in the 1990s, and now lives in Glasgow, Scotland. Her first novel, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes, was longlisted for the 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize.