Yellowface
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel. Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I. So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) succe
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What you might want to know about Yellowface
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
DC literary fiction novelist June Hayward is two failed books in when her glamorous Yale friend Athena Liu chokes to death on a pancake in her Dupont Circle apartment.
Yes. R.F. Kuang's novel is a satire of publishing, racial dynamics in literary fiction, and online discourse around authenticity.
It was a finalist for the British Book Award and the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction in 2023, and was widely named a best book of the year.
Yellowface was written by R.F. Kuang, published in 2023 by Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Yellowface is 296 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Yellowface takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Yellowface is a standalone novel by R.F. Kuang, not part of a series.
Yellowface is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.