Overview
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, NPR, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE • A 2026 NOTABLE BOOK BY THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION • A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 BY LIT HUB, THE OC REGISTER, THE MILLIONS AND MORE • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF AUGUST 2025 BY PEOPLE MAGAZINE • NAMED A MUST-READ BOOK BY THE CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS • THE STRAND’S AUGUST 2025 PICK-OF-THE-MONTH
“Dark and mesmerizing. In Chou’s signature razor-sharp style, these stories examine loneliness, projection, redemption and revenge—all while being masterfully funny and unexpected.” —NPR, Best Books of 2025
Doppelgängers. Mail order brides. Not-so-happy endings. From the critically acclaimed author of Disorientation comes a genre-bending story collection where nothing is stranger than the truth.
A mail order bride from Taiwan is packed up in a cardboard box and sent via express shipping to her much older husband in California. Two teenage girls meticulously plan how to kill and cook their downstairs neighbor. An American au pair moves to Paris to find herself, only to find her actual French doppelgänger. A father reunites with his estranged daughter in unusual circumstances: as a background actor on the set of her film. A writer’s affair with a married artist tests the line between fact and fiction, self-victimization and the victimization of others.
In these six singular stories and a novella that pivot from the terrible to the beautiful to the surreal, Elaine Hsieh Chou confronts the slipperiness of truth in storytelling. With razor-sharp precision and psychological acuity, she peels back the tales we tell ourselves to peer beneath them: at our treacherous desires, our self-deceptions and our capacity for cruelty, both to ourselves and each other. Expansive and provocative, Where Are You Really From is a visionary achievement.
“Dark and mesmerizing. In Chou’s signature razor-sharp style, these stories examine loneliness, projection, redemption and revenge—all while being masterfully funny and unexpected.” —NPR, Best Books of 2025
Doppelgängers. Mail order brides. Not-so-happy endings. From the critically acclaimed author of Disorientation comes a genre-bending story collection where nothing is stranger than the truth.
A mail order bride from Taiwan is packed up in a cardboard box and sent via express shipping to her much older husband in California. Two teenage girls meticulously plan how to kill and cook their downstairs neighbor. An American au pair moves to Paris to find herself, only to find her actual French doppelgänger. A father reunites with his estranged daughter in unusual circumstances: as a background actor on the set of her film. A writer’s affair with a married artist tests the line between fact and fiction, self-victimization and the victimization of others.
In these six singular stories and a novella that pivot from the terrible to the beautiful to the surreal, Elaine Hsieh Chou confronts the slipperiness of truth in storytelling. With razor-sharp precision and psychological acuity, she peels back the tales we tell ourselves to peer beneath them: at our treacherous desires, our self-deceptions and our capacity for cruelty, both to ourselves and each other. Expansive and provocative, Where Are You Really From is a visionary achievement.
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