Afterparties
By Anthony Veasna So

WINNER OF THE JOHN LEONARD PRIZE AT THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS AND THE FERRO-GRUMLEY AWARD FOR LGBTQ FICTIONTHEand NEW YORK TIMESand BESTSELLER'So's distinctive voice is ever-present: mellifluous, streetwise and slightly brash, at once cynical and bighearted...unique and quintessential'and Sunday Times'So's stories reimagine and reanimate the Central Valley, in the way that the polyglot stories in Bryan Washington's collectionand Lotand reimagined Houston and Ocean Vuong's noveland On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeousand allowed us to see Hartford in a fresh light.' Dwight Garner,and New York Times'[A] remarkable debut collection' Hua Hsu,and The New YorkerA Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Pick!Named a Best Book of Summer by:and Wall Street Journaland * Thrillist *and Vogueand * Lit Hub * Refinery29 *and New York Observerand * The Daily Beast *and Timeand * BuzzFeed *and Entertainment WeeklySeamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tender-hearted, balancing acerbic humour with sharp emotional depth,and Afterpartiesand offers an expansive portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans. As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship and family.A high school badminton coach and failing grocery store owner tries to relive his glory days by beating a rising star teenage player. Two drunken brothers attend a wedding afterparty and hatch a plan to expose their shady uncle's snubbing of the bride and groom. A queer love affair sparks between an older tech entrepreneur trying to launch a 'safe space' app and a disillusioned young teacher obsessed withand Moby-Dick. And in the sweeping final story, a nine-year-old child learns that his mother survived a racist school shooter.With nuanced emotional precision, gritty humour and compassionate insight into the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities, the stories inand Afterpartiesand deliver an explosive introduction to the work of Anthony Veasna So.