Ghost Music

Get in the xigxag app
This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.
Pre-order Buy Now £{{ price }}
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

A gorgeous novel of music, secrets and self-discovery from the brilliant young author of Braised Pork

For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. With her marriage, she gave up on her own career as a concert pianist, but her husband Bowen has long rebuffed her desire to have a child.

Instead, she must accommodate her mother-in-law, newly arrived from the province of Yunnan and bringing with her long-buried family secrets. Soon strange parcels start to show up on the doorstep and Song Yan's dreams become troubling and claustrophobic. Striking out alone through the winter city, she finds herself pulled into the ancient hutongs to confront the source of her unease. In a still, silent room in a timeless house, can she find the notes she needs to make sense of all the pain and beauty in her life?

Evocative, magical and endlessly surprising, Ghost Music is a captivating journey through memory, expression and self-discovery towards the shimmer of new beginnings.

Praise for Braised Pork:

'Startlingly original' Guardian
'Intensely atmospheric' LA Review of Books
'Otherworldly and deeply moving' BuzzFeed
'Real magic' LitHub
'Shimmering' Wall Street Journal
'Rich and wild' Observer
'Enchanting' Shelf Awareness
'Electric' TIME

©2022 An Yu (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • An intriguing book that knits together music and life to touch on something profound

    Guardian

  • Vivid descriptions of contemporary Beijing … Yu writes in clear, unadorned prose and deftly threads the magic-realist elements through the main narrative

    Financial Times

  • Transporting, searching and poetic

    List

  • This playful, often surreal novel packs in plenty … an elusive tale, steeped in atmosphere

    Mail on Sunday

  • Ghost Music has beautiful prose and claustrophobic imagery that intensely evokes its protagonist’s alienation

    New Statesman

More from the same

Author

Narrator

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.