The Barbarians Are Coming

Book Description from the Front Cover Flap

Now twenty-six and a graduate of Swarthmore and the Culinary Institute of America, Sterling cooks French food for the Wasp ladies of a private club and conducts an arm's-length affair with a Jewish-American princess, thereby frustrating his father's dream of a doctor son and his mother's scheme for a Chinese bride. For Sterling's parents, the barbarians are already here.

In a tale that alternates between black comedy and out-and-out slapstick, between the pain of a son alienated from his father and that of a father alienated from his son's native land, The Barbarians Are Coming is a template of the American immigrant experience: of the deracination of the second generation, the wrenching losses of the first, and the legacy of misunderstanding that binds the two. By turns antic and deeply moving, it is, ultimately, a powerful depiction of the Chinese-American experience and a profoundly affecting novel about fathers and sons.

Comments from the Front Cover Flap and Back Cover

"To say that David Wong Louie is unique is to state the pure truth. He has broken the silence of Chinese men in America. He has done it with elegance, wit, style and erudition and a pure respect for the silence itself."
--CAROLYN SEE,
Los Angeles Times Book Review
First Fiction Award citation

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR
David Wong Louie's
Pangs of Love

"Louie's work transcends the restrictions of ethnic labels and markets. He's not just a talented young Asian-American writer, he's a talented young writer, period."
--CHARLES SOLOMON,
Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Darkly humorous ... a splendid debut."
--Time

"David Wong Louie is in a class by himself.... He takes quirky, smart characters in improbable scenarios, blends them with social commentary and kinky humor, and comes up with concoctions that are refreshingly original."
--BARBARA LANE,
National Public Radio's Morning Edition

"I hope Mr. Louie's book is translated into Chinese. My grandmother and I could then read it together."
--GRACE LIN,
The Miami Herald

"Louie is particularly sharp when examining the cracks between generations.... What he conveys most successfully is the desire to absent oneself from a place both too familiar and completely foreign."
--Voice Literary Supplement

Background on David Wong Louie

Mr. Louie lives in Venice, California, and teaches at UCLA.