Description
Description
AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER - LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2026 From the bestselling author of Superfan comes a haunting novel about the demons passed down through five generations of women in a Chinese Canadian family, and what it might take for them to finally break free of the past. Will you break your mother's curse before it consumes you? Single mother Alice Chow is drowning. With a booming online business, a resentful teenage daughter, a screen-obsessed son, and a secret boyfriend, she can never get everything done in a day. So it's a relief when Alice wakes up one morning to find the counters are clear, the kids' rooms are tidy, and orders are neatly packed and labelled. But she doesn't remember staying up late to take care of things. As the strange pattern continues, she realizes someone--or something--has been doing her chores for her. Alice knows she should feel uneasy, but the extra time lets her connect with her children and with her hard-edged mother, who has started to share shocking stories from their family history--beginning with the horrors that befell her great-grandmother, who was imprisoned as a comfort woman in Hong Kong during the Second World War. But the family's demons--both real and subconscious, old and new--are about to become impossible to ignore. Set against the gleaming backdrop of contemporary Vancouver, The Hunger We Pass Down is a devastating, horror-tinged novel about how unspoken legacies of violence can shape a family. It follows the relentless spectre of intergenerational trauma as it is handed down from mother to daughter, and asks what it might take to break the cycle--heroism, depravity, or both.
About the Author
About the Author
Jen Sookfong Lee is a Chinese-Canadian author whose books include the International Dublin Literary Award nominee and Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize finalist The Conjoined, The Hunger We Pass Down, The Shadow List, Finding Home, and Superfan, a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year. The co-host of the literary podcast Can't Lit, she also acquires and edits for ECW Press. She was born and raised in Vancouver, where she continues to live with her son, and can be found online at sookfong.com.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
Praise for The Hunger We Pass Down
"A claustrophobic tale told on an epic scale...Each woman's story is as captivating--and each character as rounded--as the next. Lee has written a genuinely frightening story of rape, abuse, and neglect. A bold story of intergenerational trauma that creates spooky scares out of real-life atrocities." --Kirkus, STARRED Review
"The Hunger We Pass Down, examines terrifying generational trauma passed from mothers to daughters in a Chinese Canadian family...Intertwining this dysfunctional family saga with cruel historical reality and spectral revenge, Lee chillingly exposes the monstrous price of women's survival." --Shelf Awareness "Jen Sookfong Lee summons all the monstrous, ferocious power of the gothic to tell a story you don't dare look away from. This is the kind of book that eats your sleep." --Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love
"The Hunger We Pass Down chronicles the path of trauma through several generations of women, as it mutates and adapts like a living thing, terrorizing in perpetuity. But as much as it's a story about the brutal grip of intergenerational trauma, it's also very much about the bonds forged by this pain. Poignant and biting and haunted by all manner of unsettling spectres, this one really packs a punch." --Ainslie Hogarth, author of Motherthing "In The Hunger We Pass Down, Jen Sookfong Lee deftly leads readers through an intergenerational story of women and the ways in which they are haunted by societal expectations of femininity, motherhood, daughterhood, and unattainable perfection. You will fall in love with the characters as much as you will be haunted by them. Prepare to be pulled apart." --Jessica Johns, author of Bad Cree
"The Hunger We Pass Down is a hauntingly lyrical portrait of grief, trauma, and motherhood. Jen Sookfong Lee's novel is as terrifying as it is beautiful, and it will linger with readers long after the final page." --Monika Kim, bestselling author of The Eyes are the Best Part "Jen Sookfong Lee has crafted a grueling story where evil is thrust into a family like a knife, unasked for and unprovoked. There are sparks of humanity and love and kindness, but they're merely hopeful flickers against a matte black sky." --Alex Gonzalez, author of rekt
"Every woman is a ghost story in Jen Sookfong Lee's masterful new novel The Hunger We Pass Down...Laced with delicious dark wit, piercing insight and unbridled female rage, this terrifying tale will hold you in its tightening grip until the very last word." --David Demchuk, author of The Bone Mother
"A claustrophobic tale told on an epic scale...Each woman's story is as captivating--and each character as rounded--as the next. Lee has written a genuinely frightening story of rape, abuse, and neglect. A bold story of intergenerational trauma that creates spooky scares out of real-life atrocities." --Kirkus, STARRED Review
"The Hunger We Pass Down, examines terrifying generational trauma passed from mothers to daughters in a Chinese Canadian family...Intertwining this dysfunctional family saga with cruel historical reality and spectral revenge, Lee chillingly exposes the monstrous price of women's survival." --Shelf Awareness "Jen Sookfong Lee summons all the monstrous, ferocious power of the gothic to tell a story you don't dare look away from. This is the kind of book that eats your sleep." --Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love
"The Hunger We Pass Down chronicles the path of trauma through several generations of women, as it mutates and adapts like a living thing, terrorizing in perpetuity. But as much as it's a story about the brutal grip of intergenerational trauma, it's also very much about the bonds forged by this pain. Poignant and biting and haunted by all manner of unsettling spectres, this one really packs a punch." --Ainslie Hogarth, author of Motherthing "In The Hunger We Pass Down, Jen Sookfong Lee deftly leads readers through an intergenerational story of women and the ways in which they are haunted by societal expectations of femininity, motherhood, daughterhood, and unattainable perfection. You will fall in love with the characters as much as you will be haunted by them. Prepare to be pulled apart." --Jessica Johns, author of Bad Cree
"The Hunger We Pass Down is a hauntingly lyrical portrait of grief, trauma, and motherhood. Jen Sookfong Lee's novel is as terrifying as it is beautiful, and it will linger with readers long after the final page." --Monika Kim, bestselling author of The Eyes are the Best Part "Jen Sookfong Lee has crafted a grueling story where evil is thrust into a family like a knife, unasked for and unprovoked. There are sparks of humanity and love and kindness, but they're merely hopeful flickers against a matte black sky." --Alex Gonzalez, author of rekt
"Every woman is a ghost story in Jen Sookfong Lee's masterful new novel The Hunger We Pass Down...Laced with delicious dark wit, piercing insight and unbridled female rage, this terrifying tale will hold you in its tightening grip until the very last word." --David Demchuk, author of The Bone Mother
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Erewhon Books
Pub date:
2026-08-25
Length:
304 pages
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