Sunbirth
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  • Published: 10 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529963397
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $34.99

Sunbirth

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
15 Jul 2025
EBook
10 Jul 2025
Audiobook
10 Jul 2025
Hardback
10 Aug 2025
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At Five Poems Lake, a remote town in China at the edge of the desert, the sun is slowly disappearing and residents are undergoing shocking transformations in this dazzlingly eerie dystopian sci-fi

Since her father’s death twelve years previously, our unnamed narrator, a pharmacist, has been living with her older sister Dong Ji in Five Poems Lake on the edge of the desert. The sun over their isolated town has begun to disappear in crescents, like a gibbous moon. These increments are reported on the evening news, while the temperature drops, the lake freezes over, and the trees start to die. One night, as the narrator returns from visiting a friend in hospital, she is accosted by a man who tries to assault her – but who transforms before her eyes into a Beacon, with a searing, blinding light where his head used to be. A few nights later more Beacons are caught on film. Where do they come from? What has caused them? Do they have something to do with the vanishing of the sun? An Yu explores questions of mortality, desire and longing in this hugely atmospheric and beautiful novel, while diving deep into the relationship between the two sisters – their love for each other, the weight of responsibility and dependency, and their desire to be free.
  • Published: 10 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529963397
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $34.99
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Praise for Sunbirth

An arresting story . . . Confirms Yu’s mastery of the mesmerizing and strange

Publishers Weekly

Enthralling and surreal . . . an illuminating novel about what people choose to preserve at the end of the world

Foreword Magazine

Dizzying . . expertly deploying speculative elements to examine identity, grief and existential longing with sublime emotional impact . . . richly atmospheric . . . Sunbirth is a surreal masterpiece to ponder with pleasure

BookPage

Offers elements of magical realism and explores themes of sisterhood and grief while it unfolds an unusual premise . . . Yu excels at creating the setting, described in precise detail, and at crafting a character-driven reading experience

Library Journal

Evocative... vibrant despite a mounting sense of loss... thrilling and unexpected

New York Times

Yu’s new book abounds with evocative images and haunting moral choices

Reactor Magazine