The Chosen and the Beautiful

An Indie Next Pick!
A Most Anticipated in 2021 Pick for Oprah Magazine | USA Today | Buzzfeed | Greatist | BookPage | PopSugar | Bustle | The Nerd Daily | Goodreads | Literary Hub | Ms. Magazine | Library Journal | Culturess | Book Riot | Parade Magazine | Kirkus | The Week
A Best of Summer Pick for TIME Magazine | Book Riot | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Goodreads | Bustle | Veranda Magazine | Bookish | St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“ Gatsby the way it should have been written―dark, dazzling, fantastical. ” ―R. F. Kuang
“Vo has crafted a retelling that, in many ways, surpasses the original. . . . Astonishingly crafted."― Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Immigrant. Socialite. Magician.Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society―she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.
But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.
Nghi Vo’s debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.