In Person: Radha Lin Chaddah

Event Details

Event type: All Ages

Join Radha Lin Chaddah in store to sign copies of her new novel And the Ancestors Sing.

Event Guidelines:

• This is a ticketed event
• General Admission + Book includes access to the signing line and one copy of And the Ancestors Sing.
• Candid photography only.

About the Book:

Spanning decades of seismic change in post-Cultural Revolution China, And The Ancestors Sing is a sweeping, multigenerational novel of resilience, sacrifice, and the unbreakable pull of home, perfect for fans of Pachinko and The Island of Sea Women.

In 1978, as the Cultural Revolution fades into history, Lei is bartered away into marriage for two cartons of cigarettes and a handful of eggs. She finds herself in the unfamiliar village of her new husband where she is met with indifference. When a disaster upends their world, Lei and her husband are forced to join China’s vast wave of city-bound, rural migrants, leaving behind children whom they may never see again.

Sixteen-year-old LuLu arrives in Shanghai with nothing but ambition. Denied a factory job and determined to keep her family from starving, she turns to sex work, navigating the dangers of the city’s underbelly with sharp wit and a fierce will to survive. When a powerful client offers her a chance at security, LuLu faces an impossible choice: seize a future that could lift her family from poverty, or risk everything for a life on her own terms.

Immersive, evocative, and impeccably detailed, And The Ancestors Sing is a sweeping, multigenerational story of sacrifice, survival, and the unbreakable pull of home.

About the Author

Radha Lin Chaddah was born in London to an East Indian father and a Malaysian Chinese mother, and grew up in Kenya, the UK, and the US. She majored in Biology at the University of Chicago, earned medical and law degrees at the University of Illinois, and a Master of Public Health at Harvard University. She completed Internal Medicine residency training, and later practiced at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston. Radha and her family moved, over the course of twenty years, from Boston to NYC to Taipei to Shanghai to Beijing to Princeton, and finally to Philadelphia. Radha worked as a primary care physician in Boston, NYC and Beijing; worked with the China CDC to co-write the book, HIV/ AIDS: Beyond the Numbers; and provided mental healthcare to patients in several states as a telemedicine doctor upon settling in Philadelphia. Especially treasured by Radha are the first-hand stories she has been privileged to hear from patients, colleagues, friends, and family alike. These stories, and the storytellers who birthed them, fuel Radha’s passion to write. You can visit her online at radhalinchaddah.com.