The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu
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3.9 • 147 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A Chinese American assassin sets out to rescue his kidnapped wife and exact revenge on her abductors in this New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice: a twist on the classic western from "an astonishing new voice" (Jonathan Lethem).
Orphaned young, Ming Tsu, the son of Chinese immigrants, is raised by the notorious leader of a California crime syndicate, who trains him to be his deadly enforcer. But when Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a powerful railroad magnate, and the two elope, he seizes the opportunity to escape to a different life. Soon after, in a violent raid, the tycoon's henchmen kidnap Ada and conscript Ming into service for the Central Pacific Railroad.
Battered, heartbroken, and yet defiant, Ming partners with a blind clairvoyant known only as the prophet. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge on the men who destroyed Ming, aided by a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers, whom they meet on the journey. Ming blazes his way across the West, settling old scores with a single-minded devotion that culminates in an explosive and unexpected finale.
Written with the violent ardor of Cormac McCarthy and the otherworldly inventiveness of Ted Chiang, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is at once a thriller, a romance, and a story of one man's quest for redemption in the face of a distinctly American brutality.
"In Tom Lin's novel, the atmosphere of Cormac McCarthy's West, or that of the Coen Brothers' True Grit, gives way to the phantasmagorical shades of Ray Bradbury, Charles Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao, and Katherine Dunn's Geek Love. Yet The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu has a velocity and perspective all its own, and is a fierce new version of the Westward Dream." —Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn
Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Revenge is a difficult and complicated business. It’s always been a key ingredient of a satisfying Western, but we guarantee that you’ve never read a story quite like The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu. Set in the post–Civil War American West, the novel follows Chinese American mercenary Ming Tsu, who’s on the lam after 10 years of conscripted hard labor on a railroad work crew. On a quest to find his kidnapped wife Ada, Ming bumps into a blind prophet, a supernatural circus troupe, and a host of other strange and unsavory characters. We love Tom Lin’s brilliantly fresh take on this age-old genre. Fueled by heartbreak and rage, Ming relentlessly pursues the men who wronged him—while Lin ups the intensity and gore on every page. If you love a bloody, pulse-pounding thriller, settle in for some prairie-style justice with a 21st-century sensibility.
Customer Reviews
The West! Yes! Again!
This book’s stunning prose mesmerized me, painting vivid images of a rough and wild landscape with characters too strange to be true, too impassioned to seem normal. I want to read it again for the beautiful words to soak in.
Return
You will inhabit this book more than read it, for it will draw you in to a surreal tale of revenge, love, and the mysterious ways of the old west. I will return to this novel again - but I don’t know when. When I do, I won’t remember why I came back but i will know that I was destined to return. Read the novel and this will be clear.