Parnassus Books is pleased to welcome Kirstin Chen to celebrate the paperback release of her book, Counterfeit, in conversation with Sheba Karim.
This is a free event which will take place IN STORE on Tuesday, August 1st at 6:30pm Central Time. Because space will be limited, registration is required to attend this event. Please register for free by filling out the form below! (Note: If for any reason you need to cancel your registration, please call the store at 615-953-2243 at least 24 hours before the event so your space can be provided to another guest.) Masks are strongly encouraged during this event.
About the Book
Money can't buy happiness... but it can buy a decent fake.
Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home--she's built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava's world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn't been used in years, and her toddler's tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.
Enter Winnie Fang, Ava's enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business--someone who'd never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.
Swift, surprising, and sharply comic, Counterfeit is a stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.
About the Author
Kirstin Chen is the New York Times bestselling author of Counterfeit, Soy Sauce for Beginners and Bury What We Cannot Take. Born and raised in Singapore, she currently lives in New York City.
About Sheba Karim
Sheba Karim's fiction and essays have been featured in 580 Split, Asia Literary Review, India Today, Literary Hub, Off Assignment, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, South Asian Review, The Rumpus, Time Out Delhi and in several anthologies in the United States and India. She's written four YA novels: Skunk Girl, That Thing We Call a Heart, which made several Best Book lists including Bank Street and Kirkus, Mariam Sharma Hits the Road, a NPR Best Book of the Year, and The Marvelous Mirza Girls, winner of the South Asia Book Award. She is the editor of Alchemy: The Tranquebar Book of Erotic Stories II, the second contemporary lit erotic anthology to be published out of India. She lives in Nashville and is a Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University.
Registration: Kirstin Chen
