Synopsis
When the Great Flood of 1927 devastates Mississippi, eight-year-old Robert Chatham loses everything.
Robert’s adventures in the brooding swamplands – from hard labour to imprisonment to thwarted love – are full of courage, danger and heartbreak. This is story of how a small, hurt boy becomes a tough, young man: forced to choose between the lure of the future and the claims of his past.
Set against one of the great American landscapes, Southern Cross the Dog is a mesmerizing and savagely beautiful novel. It marks the arrival of Bill Cheng as a writer of astonishing gifts.
Details
09 May 2013
256 pages
9781447224914
Imprint: Picador
Reviews
“'An incredibly daring and powerful debut. Not only does Bill Cheng set the language on fire in Southern Cross the Dog, but he creates a whole new territory of story-telling. One of the great literary enterprises is the ability to understand 'otherness,' and Cheng proves masterful in his ability to dwell in another era and place, while still remaining rooted in the landscape of the human heart. Cheng, almost literally, writes out of his skin.' Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin”
“'Fantastic and beautifully written, Southern Cross the Dog is an epic and bluesy throwdown in the Southern tradition.' Nathan Englander, author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank”
“'Bill Cheng offers a grand and precious novel that splendidly extends our appreciation for an endlessly complex place in our American world, a place of colorful and unforgettable characters and landscapes both threatening and inviting. His work is lush and so very often poetic. Southern Cross the Dog has large and small echoes of masterful works, but we should not make any mistake—Cheng has carved out his own creative and accomplished path. His novel is a welcome and necessary addition to a society where good and compelling writing and stories are not as easy to find as some may think.' Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World and All Aunt Hagar’s Children”
“‘Bill Cheng, who is Chinese American and easily could have plumbed the depths of his first-generation immigrant experience for colorful material to novelize, to his credit took another route entirely. An evident old soul at 29, Cheng, who grew up in Queens, N.Y., and has never been to Mississippi, has nevertheless conjured up a rhapsodic ode to the blues and the bluesmen that move him... Cheng's writing is vivid and gorgeous, particularly in his descriptions of the flood. "Telegraph poles had collapsed together in a nest of crucifixions," he writes, and "homes bled out their insides - bureaus, bathtubs, drawers, gramophones - before folding into themselves." It is a courageous act of literary ventriloquism’ San Francisco Chronicle”
